When Marie Bernadette Woehrl first came in closer contact with leather at the Accademia Costume e Moda in Rome, the material just felt right to the touch. Now she creates bags that carry weight with the aim to shape the wearers’ life. In that sense, Marie’s work does not define through pieces made out of necessity, but by making pieces that belong.

After having worked for renowned fashion names as a leather good designer, Marie felt a certain distance to her initial passion for fashion. Wanting to get closer to the materials again, she decided to distance herself from the commercial system and started working on her own pieces in her atelier in Antwerp. Although not intentional, a string of events led her to shape her first collection in 2023, in which her leather weaving technique and an abundance of fringes found a central part.

Since Marie did not go through a formal course, her techniques to work the fabric were a direct reflection of her personal interpretation. Leather has a strong character and its own set of rules. However, by breaking it down into fringes, Marie found a way to bend these rules. The leather becomes more malleable and under this new light the material gives access to a whole new discipline and set of shapes. The fringes are weaved into patterns around the neck and arms, accustoming itself to the one who wears it, leaving the shapes to be reinterpreted through each usage. On the other hand, the extended fringes flow right down from the body, moving like a wave that lands and retreat from shore tirelessly.

The designs are mainly guided by her intuition, materializing the bag through the process of creation rather than a planned idea. She mostly uses vegetable-tanned “vachetta” leather, oily, with natural grain which is sourced in Belgium to steer these senses. She also pays attention to other smaller details like burnishing the edges and hand stitched finishings to give each of her pieces a refined sense of completion.

Marie is grounded in her work and polishes her craft through each piece that is made. Her light-hearted spirit transpires through the movement of each fringe on her bags. What is most important to her is that she does not give herself meaning to the bags, on the contrary they gain importance when they have reached their destination.