Inside My Closet
Buffalos, Butterflies, and Rockstars.
By Ilene Wood
With over 250 Carlos Falchi handbags in my collection, I’ve become somewhat of an expert on the designer, the brand, and its significance in the collector market. Carlos Falchi, in fact, was responsible for more than one “it” bag of the 1970s and 1980s which makes the brand’s relaunch in 2025 all the more exciting for his loyal fans, as well as a new generation of customers.
Carlos Antonio Perreira, who died in 2015, was born in Belo Horizonte, a city in southeastern Brazil in 1944. He came to New York City in the early 1970s to make his fortune in the fashion business — even adopting his mother’s maiden name of Falchi because it was Italian and at the time, Italian leather goods were considered to be of the highest quality.
Initially, he took a job as a busboy at Max’s Kansas City, a downtown club that had a late night clientele of artists and musicians. During his down time, he dyed leather skins in his bathtub and stitched one-of-a-kind jackets and pants that he wore to work. He turned leftover scraps into fringe trimmings, and made handbags and small leather goods from the rest. Not a piece was wasted.
“People would say, ‘Where did you get that jacket with all those fringes everywhere?’ And I would say, ‘I made it!’” the designer recalled during a 2011 interview with W magazine.
Musicians, including Miles Davis, Mick Jagger, Tina Turner, The Allman Brothers, The Grateful Dead, Steve Winwood, Patty Smith, and even Elvis, were among his earliest customers. Andy Warhol was also a fan, commissioning an alligator skin jacket.
Back in the early 70s Henri Bendel on 57th Street just off Fifth Avenue, was the epicenter of chic. The store was run by Geraldine Stutz, a guru of style in New York, who had an eye for what was next. The main floor of Bendel’s was designed as a street of shops, each one dedicated to a new designer whose work Stutz found exciting. One day a week on a first come first serve basis, she opened her office door to fledgling designers who hoped to be showcased in these shops.
It was during one of these open-see days that Falchi took his place in line with a bag of his one-of-a-kind handmade garments. When it was his turn, he unpacked the bag to display the contents. It wasn’t the clothes, however, that caught Stutz’s eye. She told Falchi that while she liked his clothing, it was the bag that really caught her attention. Women, she said, loved new handbags, and his designs, with their gritty boho (bohemian) aesthetic, were unlike any other designer’s work. The vitality of these designs conveyed the energy of New York, and the fact that they were made by hand in a workshop in the city only added to the allure.
To read the rest of the feature head to Ac Magazine's Winter Issue HERE.