Wendyloo handbags-Style with a Conscience

Designer Wendy Luker created the first Wendyloo handbags four years ago as an antidote to her post-graduate school brain fatigue. Now Wendyloos have been seen on NBC’s “Crossing Jordan”, A-list and indie actresses, political scions, and fashionable women of conscience from New York to California, Canada to Singapore and across Europe.

Amidst vacuous superficiality in fashion, Wendyloo is style with a conscience.

Wendyloos are sweatshop-free, highly personal handbags with a spirit. They’re produced at the MCIF Center, a women’s collective in Brooklyn, NY. When you buy a Wendyloo, you get more than a unique bag, you’re creating financial empowerment for economically disadvantaged women through conscious commerce. Additionally, Wendyloo, Inc. donates ten percent of the sale of select bags to the MCIF Center. With Wendyloo, you look good and feel good at the same time.

Each bag is signed by the woman who sewed it. “Everything we wear is constructed by somebody somewhere,” Luker observes. “Wendyloos are handmade at the MCIF Center in Brooklyn, not some faceless factory. I believe my stitchers’ excellent craftsmanship should be recognized. The energy of their time and attention is sewn into each Wendyloo.”

Go to www.wendyloo.com, click on “You and Wendyloo” and meet Maria and Romana, two of Wendyloo’s MCIF stitchers.

Following the muse of “renew and reuse”, many Wendyloo handbags incorporate recycled materials. These include: vintage linens, found objects, thrift store finds and items contributed by friends who, in doing so, add their part to the Wendyloo story.

Wendyloos are created in series, or families, leading Luker to consider the bags she creates as her babies. The number of bags in a family is literally determined by how many yards of fabric were available. This ensures that your Wendyloo is truly unique to you, or you and a few others. Whoever else buys a bag from your family/series, then becomes your bag sister. Check out other happy members of the Wendyloo family, also at wendyloo.com, under “You and Wendyloo”.

The bags’ interiors are as important as the exteriors for Luker. “I like to do fun or surprising linings that are a secret just for the owner of the bag. And every bag must have pockets!”

Wendyloos exude a sense of fun and exclusivity for their owners. They are capricious yet durable, combining practicality with a sense of play. Like her grandmothers’ quilts, every Wendyloo creation has a story--each as individual as the woman who carries it.

Wendyloo handbags are available at wendyloo.com