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WHAT'S IN A BAG?
StarMag, Jan 8, 2006
Hollywood celebrities and other well-known personalities have carried them. Now, the quirky and very fashionable Ipa-Nima handbags are available in Malaysia. BRIGITTE ROZARIO speaks to their creator.
A HANDBAG isn’t just something in which to carry your stuff around. It’s an accessory that reflects your fashion sense, style and personality, even.
A handbag should therefore help you stand out from the crowd; it should be vibrant and unique, an eye-catcher that makes people stop in their tracks.
That’s what Christina Yu believes.
If her name sounds familiar it’s because Yu is the woman behind Ipa-Nima, a brand of handbags that has graced the arms of US Senator Hillary Clinton and actresses Sarah Michelle Gellar and Datuk Michelle Yeoh.
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Christina Yu: 'I like to be different and so my bags have to be different too.' |
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In between moving house and preparing her 2006 collection, the Hong Kong-born, Vietnam-based Yu took some time to reply to questions we e-mailed to her.
Something different
According to Yu an Ipa-Nima bag should possess the four F qualities: Functionality, Funkiness, Fantasy and Flair. “Quality is a given if you sell in a high-end market like ours,” she says.
Yu admits that her bags are like her. “I like to be different and so my bags have to be different too. One of the ways to make them different is to combine materials and shapes that are not normally used together or by others.
“I think this has to be an Ipa-Nima signature. If you look at fashion these days, it has become more and more ‘mass’. What makes it interesting is how people put fashion together, and I think a lot of our bags have this DIY element.
“I believe that my bags have a soul that speaks to others – be it the clashing yet enticing colour palette that we use, or the very eye-catching embellished techniques that we develop for the season, or the fabrics that we use, which we source from indigenous tribes in central Vietnam and Myanmar. I guess if a creation is a labour of love then it shows,” says Yu.
According to her, women who use her bags have related how they were chased down a street by other women who wanted to know where to buy them. “This is the type of emotion I would like my bags to evoke; that they are so unusual you just have to get one yourself – bags to die for.”
Materials matter
The materials used to create Ipa-Nima bags are definitely unusual: anything from metallic mesh to snail shells and raffia string! Yu says she uses anything unusual that she can get her hands on and that no one has dared to use to make a bag.
“I like to experiment and mix different elements and techniques in my bags to make them unusual. Of course it gets harder and harder every season but you get inspired by different things when you travel or experiment with a new material or a new embroidery technique and it can get the whole roller coaster going again,” says Yu.
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Ipa-Nima bags are a fashion statement because of their unique designs and the quality. |
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Ipa-Nima bags have become a fashion statement today not just because of their quirky and unique designs. These bags are also recognised for the quality they represent.
The name is actually an acronym of Idee PArfaites Naissent de Notre Imagination MAgnifique, which, translated, means Perfect Ideas from the House of Magnificent Imagination.
Legal eagle
Although she was fashion-conscious as a child and a teenager, Yu opted to study law when she completed her A-levels in Hong Kong. She worked as a litigator there for some years.
She faced a crossroads in her life when her Australian husband was sent to Hanoi, Vietnam, to open a branch of the law firm they had been working for.
Yu not only followed her husband to Hanoi, she also started a handbag business. Little did she know then that from the 27sq m retail store, a laptop, one salesperson and an assistant in 1997, her business would grow into what it is today: 65 people on her payroll with more than 15 workers on site and 200 to 500 subcontract workers.
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Yu would love to find Ipa-Nima bags on the shoulder of every single girl. |
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Hoping that her bags will one day be as ubiquitous as a pair of jeans, Yu says she would love to find Ipa-Nima bags on the shoulder of every single girl at some point in time.
“Obviously this will mean that we will need to have our own retail shops in every corner of the world. I am not sure whether I can live to see it, but I am confident that Ipa-Nima will be there one day.”
Ipa-Nima bags can be found at the Maya Boutique at Hotel Maya, Jalan Ampang, Kuala Lumpur (03-2711 8866 ext 210).
Christina contemplates
On the demands of Asian versus Western markets:
"WE take into consideration what the different market demands are and try to accommodate them within the same collection. However, we do a lot of design adaptations for the Japanese market as they have very quirky tastes and we need to make some of our bags smaller in order to suit the small Japanese girls.”
On her famous customers:
“THE most well known is, of course, (US) Senator Hillary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea – my shop was her first stop as soon as she hopped off the plane in Hanoi. Others include (Malaysia’s) Datuk Michelle Yeoh, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Yasmin Le Bon, Kelly Osbourne, Sherilyn Flynn, and the Queen of Holland – apparently she was going to get one of my bags for Christmas!”
On her clientele:
“IPA-NIMA caters to women aged between 28 and 45 – professional and independent women with high incomes who dare to be different and have refined tastes. They are individuals who know their own style. They are trendsetters rather than followers.”
On the popularity of her bags in the West:
OUR bags are different from others and possess a lot more character than the ones you find in most fashion chain stores or even in branded stores these days. For the quality that our bags possess, they are extremely good value. Many of my customers have told me that they do not want to buy a Louis Vuitton or a Fendi even if they could afford it because everyone has one these days and it is just a status thing. I think an Ipa-Nima bag projects a more I-can-carry this and-look-hip sentiment.”
On piracy:
“A LOT of the local artisans have seen our successes but do not know how to adapt it and so the easiest way is to copy. This obviously has been fuelled by a certain group of customers who like our designs but do not want to pay our prices, so they ask for copies and the local producers are more than willing to make a quick buck.
“The problem with Vietnam is, like most other developing countries, it has the laws and the system but has huge difficulty in getting the laws enforced. It took me 10 years in Vietnam to get one successful raid conducted about three months ago, and even so I am not sure whether I was totally successful as I am still waiting to see whether the seized goods will be destroyed.
“A more intrinsic problem is that local people do not consider counterfeiting morally or legally wrong. We have copies of everything here – including shops that call themselves Gucci or Chanel. The most hilarious one recently is a shop called ‘Yahoo’. Also, finding a genuine CD or VCD is almost impossible in Vietnam.”
On the Asian market:
“OUR bags are very well received in Japan because, I think, the Japanese, of all Asians, are tolerant of new and different things. They love their brands, of course, but they are also willing to try others.
“I find that breaking into other Asian markets has proven to be more difficult as they are very brand conscious. I am very careful with my branding in Asia, as I would like to make it in the United States and also in Europe first before I fully launch in the Asian market.
“A lot of people think that Vietnam-made bags should be cheap. What they do not know is a lot of the branded stuff is actually made in China, Vietnam and India. It is, after all, the brand that makes all the difference.
“I really hope that, one day, Asian consumers will wake up and look at what is a really good design and a quality product as opposed to blindly buying big name brands for the name.”
Copyright Star Publications (M) Bhd
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