Handbag Designer 101: The Stories Behind Handbag Designers, Brands, and Industry Icons
Emily Blumenthal
116 episodes
2 days ago
What if the secret to growth isn’t chasing the next trend—but carrying a dream with enough grit to outlast them? In this episode, Adriana Castro shares how she turned Colombian craftsmanship and business discipline into a timeless accessories brand. Leaving a safe corporate path for design school, she transformed professors into mentors and built her first collection—and its production—from the ground up in Barranquilla. Adriana breaks down her hybrid strategy of pairing indigenous natural fi...
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What if the secret to growth isn’t chasing the next trend—but carrying a dream with enough grit to outlast them? In this episode, Adriana Castro shares how she turned Colombian craftsmanship and business discipline into a timeless accessories brand. Leaving a safe corporate path for design school, she transformed professors into mentors and built her first collection—and its production—from the ground up in Barranquilla. Adriana breaks down her hybrid strategy of pairing indigenous natural fi...
From Boutique Dreams to QVC Star: Dawn Del Russo’s Reinvention Story | Emily Blumenthal & Dawn Del Russo
Handbag Designer 101: The Stories Behind Handbag Designers, Brands, and Industry Icons
35 minutes
1 month ago
From Boutique Dreams to QVC Star: Dawn Del Russo’s Reinvention Story | Emily Blumenthal & Dawn Del Russo
For Dawn Del Russo, building a career in fashion has been a journey of resilience, adaptation, and staying true to herself. With just $10,000 in savings—partly from communion money she’d carefully saved—she launched Bella Dawn boutique without formal training, diving into trade shows and pricing with sheer determination and countless hours of research. A surprise feature on Fox Good Day New York brought her first big sales surge, along with a crash course in scaling without infrastructure. Wh...
Handbag Designer 101: The Stories Behind Handbag Designers, Brands, and Industry Icons
What if the secret to growth isn’t chasing the next trend—but carrying a dream with enough grit to outlast them? In this episode, Adriana Castro shares how she turned Colombian craftsmanship and business discipline into a timeless accessories brand. Leaving a safe corporate path for design school, she transformed professors into mentors and built her first collection—and its production—from the ground up in Barranquilla. Adriana breaks down her hybrid strategy of pairing indigenous natural fi...
