I’m a die-hard fashion lover cross-bred with the mind of an industrial designer. I devoured ELLE, VOGUE, and vintage fashion as a child, but loved to learn how things worked...how they could be improved. I love creating bags that are beautiful, unique, but extremely functional for modern and busy lives. I’m a huge fan of utility marrying form...women should have bags that have style, elegance, and attitude, but make the realities of getting around on a daily basis very simple. Style + function is my design philosophy.  I’m finishing up our A/W’07 collection...very excited about the line! I think it’s our best to date...very lovely surprises coming for fans of the line, new and existing.

Ben (my partner) and I source unique leathers that we feel will fit the Hayden-Harnett line best. They come from many places: Italy, France, Brazil, upstate NY. We also use many vintage and unique prints we create in-house for many of our linings. We like having something unique and special inside the bags. We try to use as many natural materials as possible...some of our leathers are vegetable-dye and our canvas is 100% cotton. We use pigment inks to print, which is less harmful to the environment. I’m continually inspired by art, music, and film...the Velvet Underground, My Morning Jacket (fellow Kentuckians!), Night of the Hunter, Gene Wilder, Mark Rothko. It all comes together in really unexpected ways during a season. It all filters out into the collections each season.  I love metal-smithing and sculpture...we create and custom-mold many of our hardwares and use unique finishes for antique or colored effects. For F’07, I’m working on this cool colored glossy ceramic-based finish. Came out quite nice.

Ben and I started Hayden-Harnett on April Fool’s Day, 2005...kind of a joke. We were sitting at out kitchen table and I drew the logo on a napkin. Later that day, I really thought about it and decided I was ready to make the leap into the wild world of fashion accessories sans parachute. The freefall was intense, but the landing has been totally worth the effort and lack of sleep.  We were both working ourselves silly for large fashion companies and knew we wanted to do something for ourselves...something that we believed was truly “the right thing” and would be somewhat beneficial. It all goes back to the obsession with improving the existing and a love of fashion. I felt there wasn’t enough function in many of the better (or worse) handbags on the market. Also, the quality was missing if the functionality was there. We decided to create a line of fine accessories that was everything I couldn’t find: high-style, amazing quality, functionality, and a non-inflated price for all of the above.

Hmmm...the only nightmarish thing that’s ever happened has been with beading. We have a new style for Spring’07, the NOLAN satchel, that uses these amazingly chunky (heavy) colored resin beads that we created. Wow...it was a ton of work to get the beads and color developed correctly.  Then, just getting the cord weight and the technique for sewing on the beads so the pattern would lie straight was astoundingly difficult. Many, many hours of development work and sampling! We finally nailed it...the NOLAN turned out pretty cool and durable, despite looking delicate, fab, and hand-crafted.

I think our greatest achievement is that we’ve succeeded in a flooded accessories market despite being 100% independent. We do not belong to any showroom, we have done zero tradeshows to date, no advertising (outside of blogs), we have no investors. Most of our business is by word-of-mouth... that’s amazing! We love and respect our customers and retailers and they love us back. It’s that simple.  I think many young designers get too caught up in trying to find out “how to make it” and how to be like other companies. There is no point in repeating the past, only to improve for the future. We felt the best approach was to take a leap and follow our own instincts... Ben and I had two small goals: pay our rent every month and feed ourselves and our cat. We also wanted 100% creative freedom.  Low expectations, yes, but we have a super-high work ethic. Every time we make a bag, we put our reputation out there. We always try to uphold the style, originality, quality, and function our customers expect. We won’t put anything out there that we wouldn’t use and love for years to come.