What were you doing in 2009? Well, of course:
•President Obama was inaugurated amidst pretty wild financial meltdown;
• Sully was landing his plane on the Hudson;
•Some guy threw his shoe at (ex) President Bush and got three, yes three, years in jail;
• Slumdog Millionaire wins best movies at the Oscars (so be it for Crazy Rich Asians to be the first major movie to feature an all Asian cast); and
•we were going a little crazy as well.
Our theme was Desert Rose. An adventure into the Sahara Desert, where we encounter exotic animals (crocodiles and pythons) , ancient culture and fabulous desert colours. In retrospect, we now know that many people are not overly fond of snakes, so we are not sure we will do this motif again.
The iconic bags of spring summer 2009 were:
The Isis
As the name suggests, when we pick a theme, we follow through. At that time, we had had a succession of very popular hobos, all soft leathers and some embellishment. The spring summer version was right in our DNA. If it was not enough to do leather applique, we decide to heighten the desert feel by using little brown wooden beads to give the texture of the desert. This bag was a pain to make: to get the right effect, we used lots of little pieces if leather applique, with just the panel taking over two days to make. The changing landscape was made to come to life with the different leather. Interspersed with the desert were little oases made with blue beads. And then, as if we needed more, we braided the handle. The leather is still soft today and all the embellished beads still look great. We have included the Isis in our catalogue.
The Arora
In short, this was a fairly simple canvas tote with a leather handle. However, it had the world's cutest crocodile as its embellished feature. We made the motif with shiny crocodile leather (pattern not real croc leather) and used beads and stones to create the eye, the little feet and the wrinkled back. And then a bit of cross stitch to create the ripple of water. Looking back, the handle looks a bit out of fashion and has not dated so well. Notwithstanding the handles, the crocodile still looks great.