Most of us could name the creative director behind our favourite handbag. Few could name the person who actually designed it. The specialists who spend months perfecting a handle’s drop work out of sight. Fabrique wants them seen, selling bags under their designers’ own names. For Autumn/Winter 2026, two of Italian leather goods’ most experienced join the label: Giorgia Scarpa and Angela Lauria.
Giorgia Scarpa: the Boston, loosened
Scarpa has been designing accessories for almost three decades. She has led handbag collections at Gucci and worked as a freelance design director for Saint Laurent. Before that, she moved through Prada, Jil Sander, Helmut Lang, and Dior during John Galliano’s reign. She has also consulted for Bvlgari, Roger Vivier, Tod’s and Loewe. Few designers have seen luxury from quite so many angles.
For Fabrique, she has chosen one of the most familiar shapes in the handbag canon: the Boston bag. Usually rigid and a little prim, it has been allowed to relax in her Marais Soft Boston Bag. The body dips softly at the centre. It comes in dark brown waxed leather or olive brown Spanish suede, both of which are meant to age visibly and well.
The detail that gives the bag its personality is a strap. One of its two shoulder straps is designed to slide down the arm. Scarpa says the idea came from watching women on the streets of Paris, where a slipped strap somehow makes someone look as if they know exactly where they’re going. Most designers would treat that as a flaw to engineer out. Scarpa built the bag around it.
After a decade of pristine investment pieces kept in dust bags between outings, a bag designed to look better for being used feels quietly radical.
Angela Lauria, from Alaïa to Fabrique
Lauria’s route has been just as storied. She was senior leather goods designer and studio manager at Maison Alaïa. Before that, she spent years at Bottega Veneta under both Tomas Maier and Daniel Lee, two very different readings of the same house. She started out at Versace and has developed proposals for Stella McCartney along the way.
Her debut for Fabrique shows the discipline of someone who has worked at the highest level and no longer needs to shout. The bags are softly structured and elongated, with fluid construction and hardware kept to a minimum. Branding is barely there. What holds the eye is proportion, the quality of the leather, and the small construction decisions that a casual glance misses and an expert notices immediately.
Big fashion houses rarely credit the people designing their bags. The creative director gets the attention, and the leather goods team gets on with the work. Fabrique does things differently. Scarpa and Lauria spent years at some of the biggest names in luxury, from Prada and Gucci to Saint Laurent and Bottega Veneta. Now their names go on the bags they design, and that experience is the reason to take a closer look.
Both designers’ Autumn/Winter 2026 bags are available now at fbrq.com.
