Vive Le Sac!

  • Julia Gash
  • 28th January 2014

Bonjour!  I am currently showcasing Talented, our own brand range of canvas tote bags, at a French trade show.  We’ve just flown in following trade shows in London and Berlin and have one more to go next month back in Britain.

I create designs for Talented and my focus is a range of Cityscape bags, which feature illustrations of cities from around the world.  Most Saturdays are spent with brush and ink in hand in my design studio, exploring and defining each city, which we then sample and print onto tote bags and zip purses.  I love it and I am now being asked to create customized Cityscapes from shops around the world.  I have three cities queued up for February.

Before I start the design, I spend over an hour researching the city. Some I may have visited but increasingly they are places I dream of travelling to.  I pick out popular landmarks together with places that interest me.  Water and bridges feature heavily throughout the collection.   As I draw it feels like I am there.  I not only enjoy the creative process but love exploring the cities through my work too.  The illustrations contain a little character figure of a man on a bicycle … he’s my alter ego and appears on all of the Cityscapes.

When I was a little girl, my dad bought a trailer tent and as a family we spent two weeks every summer travelling throughout Europe visiting city after city and seeing the sights.  He ran his own print company and he always made a drawing book from scraps of paper for my sisters and I so that we could create a holiday diary.  I would write and draw about each place we had visited every day. 

Over forty years later, I guess this is what I’m back doing.  The Cityscapes I create today are firmly rooted in my childhood experience of fusing my passion for art and pleasure in travelling.  Being in business demands many hours of your life, can often take you to the brink, both financially and emotionally.  If you can create your business around something that you’re good at and love doing then it eases the pain and hopefully like me, will bring you bags of pleasure along the journey.