Chic and Tough: Cocoblanco Handbags Mix LA and NY Style

Fashion Wire Daily - Los Angeles - What happens when New York tough meets Los Angeles chic? Cocoblanco happens, the grassroots handcrafted handbag company that is the brainchild of transplanted New Yorker Jules Schrager. An ex-Gucci exec that dropped out of the Big Apple rat race and headed west a couple of years ago, Schrager says her line of punk rockish/biker influenced bags evolved out of a sense of escape."I started the business when I came to Malibu. I got rid of New York. I got rid of the job. I got rid of my entire lifestyle in Connecticut and New York because at that point I was living in Connecticut and also commuting to New York. I had a whole thing going on there," Schrager admits, adding that a divorce helped make her want to escape the Right Coast and head Left. "I decided that I didn't want to do any of that anymore. I wanted to move to California. I wanted to live in Malibu. I wanted to be on the beach. I wanted to start my own company and I wanted to go back to being an artist."
And so she did, first from her sister's Beachwood Canyon home's storage room and later from her own place in Malibu. "I just decided at a certain point that I had this desire to start my own company and knew that I wanted to start designing and making artwork," she explains. "That really inspired the designs that I started coming up with for my bags, because I just started playing around and creating a bunch of designs. Once I did that my sister and I started wearing them and people just were like, 'Where can I get that bag? I want that bag.' They'd be buying the bag off of her and me, right off of our bodies. It just sort of started to get momentum and that's when I knew that I was going in the right direction with the bag design. And all of a sudden people started calling me and wanted to place orders for bags. That spurred me into really developing the line and going out to stores. Once that I started it just sort of took off."
With names like "Easy Rider," "The Godfather," and "Pale Rider," Schrager's bags are an appealing mix of colored and embossed leathers, massive hardware, and interesting shapes and sizes.
"There's a definite rock and roll vibe to my line. There's definitely a lot of hardware, a lot of wild fabrications, bright colors. I love calf hair and a lot of heavy metal accessories, big hooks, big grommets. I'm also inspired a lot by horses, saddles, tack, all of those kinds of things and how they fit together. So my hardware is very big, but I was also very concerned about the quality of the hardware," Schrager says. "I don't really use a lot of hardware that comes from bad companies. I use hardware that comes from, sometimes I use hardware that comes from shipping companies, solid brass hardware, things that actually work and are really utilitarian, but look amazing."
It seems that tons of high-profile Angelenos think her Cocoblanco bags are distinctly amazing, too.
"Naomi Watts is a customer of mine. She's got a couple of different bags. She's really, really cool. She takes everything in a lot of neutral like brown colors. She's actually a good customer. She's always interested in what we're doing and the new stuff. Sarah Jessica Parker called us for a bag. The Desperate Housewives all carry our bags. Lucy Liu has a big messenger bag. We have a lot of interest from a lot of different people. So that's been really cool and really flattering and really exciting also," Schrager says giddily.
The Cocoblanco collection, which also includes belts as well as handbags, is selling in specialty boutiques across the United States, including Madison and Fred Segal, as well as directly on line at www.cocoblanco.com. Right now there are "about twenty bags" in Schrager's line, which is just over a year old. But she's got plans for much more.
"We started with bags, and we have launched belts now. We do leather cuffs. We're keeping it to that right now. I've had a lot of requests to start doing dog bags and baby bags and these are things that we're definitely starting to look into. Hip moms want really cool baby bags. We've got a lot of stars that have been calling us for bags and people are asking for baby bags," Schrager says happily.
"The direction right now, though, is to stay very focused with the bags and the belts and the leather cuffs that we're doing. That's the thing, we really want to have consistent growth and I'd certainly like to do a million dollars next year or whatever. But I think that the way to really do it is to build it and make sure that everything is on track and on target. We're taking it kind of slowly. It's been really on fire since the day that we started. But I want to keep it manageable. The plan is to build an amazing brand that is really based on quality and design integrity and to keep coming out with new stuff all the time."
And so far, so good, for Jules Schrager and Cocoblanco. Stay tuned for their second year; it should be pretty interesting.

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