Lucrezia Kauffmann

Lucrezia Kauffmann is a designer from Milan who founded her homonymous brand in 2017. After modeling school, and several working experiences away from home, through effort and spirit of adaptation, she managed to find the key to being understood by people, launching her iconic net bag. 

It all starts in Milan, at the Secoli Institute, where Lucrezia studies fashion design for women’s clothing, learning how to sew fabrics and leather. After graduation, she moves to Florence, where she works for a company that produces clothing for international brands like Jean Paul Gaultier and Paul Smith. Later she flies to London and works as an intern in a small company, specializing in country-style bridal clothing and accessories. Lucrezia finds herself designing for the first time bridal accessories such as clutch bags and veils, although she has skills that are far from this field. However, she adapts to the circumstances and learns on the spot, demonstrating readiness and strength: qualities that would be fundamental for the continuity of her future brand in the following years. 

When she returns to Italy, she starts making men’s leather jackets and the first customer requests begin to arrive. However, it is only when a friend of her mother asked her to make a bag, one in a style completely different from what her brand represents today, that Lucrezia decides she would work with accessories from then on. In 2017, she opens her luxury leather bags brand directly from the family tannery, with the iconic central zip and metal feet in the most extravagant shapes. After successfully opening two pop-ups in Milan, one in 2020 and another in 2022, she suffers a well-orchestrated scam: she sends more than 1000 bags to the fake british buyer from Selfridges, an elegant department store in London, whose profile is hacked. This scam and the low marketability of the product, cause Lucrezia to change tack. She undertands, with some bitterness, that it was necessary to find a product that would reach the public more easily. 

The iconic mesh bag, inspired by the one that her grandmother used to shopping with, is created for a personal purpose: to go to the beach with friends. Lucrezia understands that this bag was exactly what people needed: a practical accessory, versatile and graceful, just as she needed it herself. Since that time the net bag is reinvented several times and thanks to a network of virality it has managed to reach a variety of people. 

Thanks to the collaboration with the IMARIKA boutique in Milan and with the cosmetics brands Clinque and Caudalié, sales and brand popularity increase. Insipired by Y2K fashion, she also launches the denim collection, which is produced by an Italian company that uses a production process with low water consumption. All the creations of the brand are made with waste materials from old collections or external companies, mainly made in Italy. Lucrezia’s projects take shape thanks to the work of a group of artisans located in the surroundings of Milan.

When I asked to her “What advice would you give to a young designer who has an idea in mind but lacks the courage to pursue it?” Lucrezia responds that you must arm yourself with a good dose of resourcefulness and stubbornness, and present yourself to the public, artisans or anyone else, with a clear and specific idea. 

After years of hard work, strength to start over and reinvent themselves, Lucrezia and her idea of fashion, which combines comfort and style, have found their space and its audience.

Article written by Elisa Giovannini