I remember the January, it was January 18th,  the year I arrived in San Francisco from Slovenia, wearing my vintage-style clothing that I was so in love with, including my handbag, which I inherited from my long dead aunt, Frederica. And then a doctor’s bag that I salvaged from a trash bin in Ljubljana.  It even had old hotel stickers from exotic places like Venice, Bombay and Monaco. And here I found myself in San Francisco in my little vintage summer dress in the middle of January. Nobody told me that California could be cold.  It was not how I imagined it at all.

But let’s get back to my handbags. I have this tradition that I put things I like on a pedestal. Shoes; photos; sometimes, my favorite fruit, and just then, my two bags. They tied me to the place I came from, they held the excitement of anticipation, and the feeling of giving way to life,  to the will-o-the-wisp and oblivion.  And so that’s how I got inspired to design and make handbags. I bought a very heavy industrial sawing machine. I found some fine leather and started to put pieces together. First, I made a bag inspired by Frederica’s handbag, with pockets on the side, in crocodile impression cowhide leather. With a zipper on the top. It made me think of safaris, for no clear reason, and warm places, and train rides, and the smoke trains leave behind when they depart the station.

As I make these bags, I live a double life in my imagination.  I don’t think about the work; I follow a string of fantasies. The next creation was a reincarnation of my doctor’s bag, actually a variation on a theme.  When I think of that bag I think of jaguars slinking around, and unnecessarily dangerous adventures.  But, of course, people may wear elegant clothes in those situations as well. I asked a friend, a talented artist and carver, to make frames for my bags, and I asked him to carve jaguar heads on the both ends of the frame. I sketched a design, made a pattern, cut the leather and embossed with stripes.  Both bags were a success and I have gone on to make many different styles of handbags but those two remain my favorites.