Kuku Big Bag

Kuku Big Bag is a brand of handcrafted, modern and functional design leather accessories, satchels, backpacks and bicycle panniers. They are designed for creative professionals with an eye for refined, bespoke design pieces. The unique designs are bold, using contrasting colours and a juxtaposition of shapes to make a aesthetic statement. Kuku Big Bag proudly engenders traditional leather craftsmanship and hand stitching as core their production processes.

About me

I worked as a graphic designer throughout my professional life. However, I have always had a longing to 'make' things ever since I was a child. In 2011, everything changed when I moved into a nice little Victorian house in Highbury. I walked into the house at the first viewing and immediately noticed an old sewing machine sitting by the kitchen. This was the humble beginnings of my journey away from advertising and into the designer/maker world.

My friends were my first inspiration for Kuku Big Bag and I started designing bags based on their style and personality. The bags were thus named after these people. I started spreading the word of my new found creative endeavour and through this, a good friend offered me 3 pieces of nubuck leather. These pieces sat rolled up for a long time, fearing I could not work with such beautiful materials. One afternoon, just before an evening design fair I was attending at a Parisian vintage shop in Crouch End, London, I took the piece out and started cutting into it. It took me a few hours to get the bag finished. This bag, called 'The Hendrick' became the first leather bag in the Kuku Big Bag collection.

Making that first leather bag was such a joy, I decided to attend a course at the London College of Fashion and at the Alri Workshop in Hong Kong to learn about traditional leathercraft. With the new found skills, Kuku Big Bag gradually grew.

Early this year, I spent 6 months in Amsterdam with the plan to work in advertising while I slowly work towards making Kuku Big Bag grow. The advertising market was dwindling and as I waited for answers from the jobs I have applied for, Kuku Big Bag actually grew. The decision to start selling my work came firstly out of a necessity to make a living, but calling myself a designer/maker was really the actual 'leap'. Once I started to embrace that title, I also started to gain the confidence and desire to make this 100% my core work. Retrospectively, the dwindling advertising world in Amsterdam was a blessing in disguise.

While galavanting in Hong Kong early this year, I was inspired and ultimately embraced its growing community of artists and their strong desire to find their own unique creative identity. Following the move to Amsterdam in February 2013, I was further inspired by the dutch creative culture, their love for functional design, and most important of all, for products that are designed around their mobile, cycling culture. These influences of contemporary, minimalist, functional designs ideas eventually set the boundaries of the Kuku Big Bag creative language.