Luckynelly is a slow fashion label that was founded in Berlin in 2012. All items are handmade and vegan and have already been seen on catwalks in New York, Paris and Berlin. In an interview with founder Christine Rochlitz, FashionUnited spoke about sustainable material innovations, how Luckynelly was founded and the work, transparency and promises that lie behind each item.
You have been experimenting with vegan material innovations for Luckynelly since 2012. Could you describe the motivation behind it and how Luckynelly came about?
Since I have always been very interested in fashion, design, interiors, painting, colors, new trends and creating unique and exclusive things, I studied fashion design at the Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences with a successful degree and founded my own brand Luckynelly in 2012 Berlin established.
The brand name is inspired and created by my beloved Bearded Collie Nelly and my rabbit Lucky, who were my muses and also stood for the decision to only use non-violent and vegan materials and to avoid any animal skin, leather, fur, wool and the like. Of course also because of my great love for nature and animals, and to make the fashion world a little better and more sustainable. At that time, the vegan topic was still largely unknown in the fashion industry. That’s why we see ourselves as visionaries and pioneers of vegan and sustainable luxury handbags.
Materials mentioned include those made from strawberries, apples, coconuts, pineapples, cork and more. What is your favorite material and why?
When I came across cork as a material, I immediately started using this amazing material for our collections because cork looks and feels like real leather and can even be embossed to look like real snake or crocodile leather. It is also a sustainable and completely natural material. So cork is definitely one of my favorite materials. But there are still so many more innovative ecological vegan materials to be found.
As an enthusiastic “material stalker”, I have been researching the most innovative ecological vegan materials in the world for many years, such as sewable wood, sewable slate stone, Piñatex (from pineapple fibers), Muskin (from mushrooms), Malai (from coconuts), Fruitleather Rotterdam, Desserto (cactus “leather”), washable paper, foldable ceramic that can be cut with scissors to make jewelry and Apple Skin (made from apple waste) for our brand, which are now used on a larger scale for fashion products.
My two Dutch professors, who supervised me during my studies, had previously worked with the most famous trend researcher Li Edelkoort and always told us that materials would be the trends of the next decades, because cuts and garments would always be repeated, trends of the 20s , 70s, 90s, future etc. So even during my studies I was totally focused on the use of special materials. For my diploma, I screen-printed my fabrics myself and developed and manufactured the first bags.
You recently won the Green Product Award as a public favorite for your luxury handbag made from strawberries. How exactly is Berriestex made and do you plan for this to be used by other brands?
Yes, we were very happy about that and were very proud of it because we developed this material ourselves. However, we have put the Berriestex material on hold for now, as we are currently working on the development of other, exciting materials, such as Plantfur, a vegan fur material that is made from 100 percent plants and no plastic is used. And “hair” that is made 100 percent from plants, which I just used to design some handbags. The market for plastic-free hair extensions would also be conceivable.
The composition of our Berriestex material is of course our trade secret, but it is made from overripe strawberries and combined with vegetable oils, waxes and resins to create this vegan leather.
You can also have bags made to measure at Luckynelly – what were the most unusual requirements you worked with?
Probably the most unusual request was a small bag that I made from a banana leaf from a friend’s garden.
Each item is handmade and therefore time-consuming and labor-intensive. How much do you have to spend on a Luckynelly handbag?
Yes, that’s right! It takes a day or two to make a Luckynelly handbag, but there’s nothing I like more than creating new handbags and accessories and working with new, exciting materials. Luckynelly is my whole heart and soul, which goes into every bag I make. You can see and feel that too! Smaller accessories and bags cost around 150 to 350 euros, larger ones between 900 and 1,900 euros, but they are handcrafted to the highest quality, and even the edges of the handbags are painted by hand. A handbag from the big fashion brands often costs many times more, and not much is known about the production and transparency.
They have specialized in a few select stores as a sales model – Gallery Malina in Berlin and Flying Solo in New York City. What led to this decision?
We are a slow fashion brand and offer small, limited collections. Most shops and online stores want to sell as many pieces as possible, that is not our goal. In our price segment, this makes perfect sense. Our bags are unique and that’s what our customers want; something that no one else has and can have. We want to convey sentimental value that can be passed down through generations, a very special product with history and heart. We are not a handbag shop, but a designer label and I make the bags myself as a designer.
Is Luckynelly distributed worldwide? Which markets are most interested in?
In Germany and the USA, but we are also in the process of focusing on the Canadian and Australian markets and others.
What is planned for the future – a new material, an appearance at a fashion show or a new product?
Our latest vegan and sustainable luxury designer handbag collection 2023/24 is made from tea – Wastea – Now Leather. This pioneering material is a re-upcycling alternative to leather from the tea industry and is 100 percent sustainable, vegan, plant-based and bio-based. The bags are designed by me in our studio/manufactory in Berlin, the patterns are created by myself and manufactured by hand to a high quality with the utmost attention to detail and care.
For example, the shopper bag can be worn on two sides, the black side with the design stripes and on the other side it is plain “Tea Taupe”. Our Luckynelly – Berlin Metall logo is attached to both sides, i.e. “to-wear-two-in-one”. Our Luckynelly Co-Founders pendant is also a key ring, and the strap of our new handbag “Ginger” can also be worn as a waist belt. Our round tags are also 24 carat gold plated.
We are currently entering into many new partnerships with the most innovative material manufacturers and start-ups and are very much looking forward to working with many other new materials! We are also continuing to research plastic-free alternatives that are needed for the production of handbags, such as edge colors, inlays, yarns, glue and so on.
As you can see from our Instagram profile and website, we are constantly creating new, unique, artistic handbags and other accessories, which are published in editorials in the most important fashion and art magazines around the world, such as Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar , Cosmopolitan, Grazia, Glamour, L’Officiel and many more. We have been featured on the catwalks at New York Fashion Week and Paris Fashion Week, are featured as a sustainable designer brand at Berlin Fashion Week, and have also been featured in Forbes magazine.
This interview was conducted in written form.