ENVELOPE CLUTCH, 1998
LEAF TOTE, 2005
Assorted Envelope crocodile clutches, Nancy Gonzalez, Fall 2009.
© Anita Calero/Supervision NY
Nancy Gonzalez’s bags don’t have an identifying signature—a logo, a motif, a pattern, or even a distinctive shape—like those by other designers. Improbably for this day and age, they don’t even have identifying hardware. Gonzalez’s designs are free of brand fingerprints, save for the luxury materials from which they’re crafted.
In 1988 Gonzalez began selling her designs with a line of belts in her native Colombia under the label Encueros de Colombia. She then expanded to bags and entered the market in the United States a decade later. She dyes and treats her exotics in a sublime way—for example, punching up her signature crocodile skins in vibrant, beautifully saturated colors like deep fuchsia and peacock green, experimenting with laser cutting for three-dimensional floral accents, and creating strands and weaving them together for a wicker-like effect. Her signature crocodile chain links are made of titanium covered in the precious skin. “I believe the highest form of luxury is having options,” Gonzalez said in Pamela Golbin’s Nancy Gonzalez (2013). Her line strikes a chic counterpoint between verve and a restrained and ladylike sense of design or, as she told Women’s Wear Daily in 2006, “a cross between fantasy and classic.” Among the more popular styles: the Gotham Clutch, a cocktail-hour favorite, and the roomy Leaf Tote. She also launched a shoe collection in 2016 that is proving to be as popular as her bags.
While Gonzalez hasn’t cornered the market on exotics—you’ll find plenty of other skin lovers in this book—she does have the advantage of owning the entire production line, right down to the crocodile farms and tanneries. For the customer, that means that her handbags cost a fraction of the others.
“I started because I was looking for something that I really love,” Gonzalez told the Miami Herald in 2012. “It was not a business orientation or the idea of having my own company. It was more for me, inside.”
“I like the idea that women buy my bags just for themselves—it doesn’t matter if no one else understands it. To me, this is the largest luxury.”
—NANCY GONZALEZ, South China Morning Post, February 8, 2013