The future of the purses

This current pre-sale, ending on November 30th, will be the last for now.

If you follow me on social media you may have seen that I have been fighting a losing battle against knock-offs for the better part of a year now. The counterfeit bags are available everywhere from Amazon to Temu and keep getting promoted on tiktok and instagram by influencers with millions of followers. My sales have suffered so badly as a result that I had to sell my house. I had a small uptick in orders earlier this month when Trixie Mattel promoted a knock-off of my bag on her youtube channel and people found me through comments crediting me for the original design. That helped me to reach my sales threshold for the month, but it was just a fluke (and honestly a very depressing fluke even though it resulted in some sales lol! Trixie's team took down that part of the video but never replied to any of my messages offering to send her one of my bags.) Every single day I wake up to messages from people alerting me to a Temu ad or a tiktok shop selling copies of my bags, and the fight feels very futile at this point.

That being said, I am not entirely giving up. In December I'm going to be offering bespoke bags with custom options on the style (Ella, Iris, ITA, Melisande, Holliday, Evie, etc.) the colors, the charms, metal hardware color, and lining color. These will be more pricey than my pre-sale bags have been because they will be entirely one of a kind custom bags, but patrons will be able to get them at a reduced rate. So if you aren’t a patron yet you may want to hop on now!

I'm also working with a new manufacturer to create a high-end eco-friendly version of my bag that I'm hopefully going to start offering in 2025 in small batches. Making the transition to slow fashion that is more in line with my ethics regarding materials and production is something I've wanted to do for a while anyway. But this feels like the right time.

So if you have wanted to pre-order one of my bags at my current price you’ll need to place the order before November 30th. After that I will be offering bespoke options in December, and then next year I will be transitioning to luxury bags.

I still plan to pursue legal action as soon as I can afford a lawyer. Right now I'm still struggling to pay my bills so I don't see it happening any time soon, but I am not going to let this go. Even if I can't do it for years, I am very intent on making sure that my design is fully mine again someday. This idea was borne from a health crisis in which I found myself needing to carry water with me at all times, and it is so gutting to have had something so personal to me, such an integral part of my life story, be stolen. So it's not just about the money. It's about my dignity and fighting for what I believe is right.

I understand that halting production of my bags means that the only place to buy them will be from the people who stole my design. But I just am not selling enough bags per month to meet my manufacturer minimums so I don’t have a choice. If you do decide to buy a knock-off, please consider tipping me on Venmo (@kategabrielle) or donating to my gofundme to balance things out.

Thank you to everyone who has supported my shop throughout this. I appreciate you so much!!

xoxo Kate