It's a satchel. Or perhaps a briefcase. Or perhaps a handbag. Or perhaps all three. It's definitely a trophy, a portable statement of a desire to be considered fashionable, the leather expression of cool. It's the hottest, most recherché designer piece of the year. It's the Mulberry Alexa, the £750 handbag that's beating the recession, ruling over 2010's accessory market, inspiring a high-street homage or 10, and insuring that at least one British company surfs this wave of the economic downturn with breathless ease.
In October, luxury brand Mulberry reported that its sales had risen by 57% across the label's 40 UK stores in the proceeding 10 weeks when compared with the same period in 2009. Like-for-like sales increased by 79% across its 90 international stores. Mulberry is turning into one of those freaky anomalies the recession occasionally produces; one of the very few companies beating the odds of this grim financial climate, expanding while everything around it falters or fails. A lot of the company's success has rested on the crazy popularity of this one bag, which Mulberry unleashed on to its adoring public in January 2010.
The Alexa was conceived in tribute to Alexa Chung, the British broadcaster, model and fashion icon so routinely referenced in the style press that she'd be something of a meaningless cliché if she weren't quite so good at wearing clothes. The bag was first mooted after Mulberry creatives leafed through a magazine and spotted a photograph of Chung carrying an Elkington, Mulberry's classic men's briefcase. "We loved how it looked," says Emma Hill, Mulberry's creative director, the woman credited with much of the label's recent success, "and we thought designing a bag that was inspired by Alexa, by that particular image, was just… a nice thing to do. And, of course, Mulberry has this tradition of naming bags after girls. But it wasn't a collaboration [with Chung]; she didn't contribute to the design process."
Hill wanted to channel Chung's low-key, deshabillé, coolest-girl-in-sixth-form sensibility; and also the boysy, briefcase-y spirit of the Elkington. She concocted the Alexa template accordingly. "I don't believe in labouring things," Hill says. "If it isn't working by the first or second prototype, I walk away." But the Alexa was working. Did Hill know immediately that she'd hit on a winner?
"It was one of those things where you see the first proto, and you go: 'Oooh…' I call it a nose twitcher. I see [a prototype] and my nose twitches, because I can smell the money."
The smell of money is not the kind of sentiment you'd expect to hear invoked in the winter of 2010. Our jobs and pensions are under threat, for heaven's sake. And yet Hill could smell money: in one week in November alone, 380 Alexas were sold. Three hundred and eighty women spent £750 (at least) on one particular handbag. How? Why?
Hill thinks that in some ways the recession helped build the bag's fortune. "It sort of was the perfect bag at the perfect time," she says. "It was originally made at our factory in Somerset [subsequently, spiralling demand for the Alexa meant that production had to be moved abroad] and I think there is a sense in a recession that people want to buy British. I remember during the recession of my childhood, of the 1970s, that people wanted to buy from Marks & Spencer and John Lewis on a point of principle; I think this comes from the same place. But also, it's an adaptable bag – you can wear it in different ways. Over your shoulder, over your body, carry it in your hand. So it feels like you're getting more, in that sense. And it's not gaudy. It's easy, understated, but kind of exceptional. I always say it's the anti-It bag that somehow became an It bag."
Other justifications surface regarding the country's enduring, apparently recession-proof love affair with pricey handbags in general and the Alexa in particular. There's the cost-per-wear argument: you carry a handbag everywhere, every day, and so you get your money's worth from it. There's the chance that it's testimony to our ongoing need for some glamour, some decadent consuming, whatever else. "I spent my 20s not paying the rent so I could buy nice shoes," Hill says. "Women will probably always do that."
However it works, whatever drives it, whatever it says about us, Mulberry's singular ability to tap our bag lust and transform it into hard cash is impressive. Will anything come after the Alexa, though? "Oh yeah," says Hill. "Next year it'll be all about the Tillie. She's the new Alexa." The Tillie is a mid-sized, boxy-shaped, soft leather bag which builds on the utilitarian-luxe feel of the Alexa and moves it on slightly. The Tillie's making Hill's nose twitch lately. "But," she says, "the Alexa will keep going. We did different things to prolong its life with the new collection; we did it in what we call 'Bonkers': tiger prints, shrunken shapes, an Alexa camera bag. You know. For the die-hard Alexa fans." And there are clearly a fair few of them knocking around.
Another Story:
I love my oversized Mulberry Alexa. She makes me feel so confident, she brightens up any outfit and I love hugging her soft leather. I love the admiration she gets, I love it when people compliment her and I love swishing her off my arm as I walk through the more fancy parts of town. We’re best friends. I’m never letting her go.
