Jacki Easlick Handbag

Jacki Easlick is a Handbag Designer based in Manhattan. Jacki has partnered with over 500 charities throughout the United States to help raise money through selling her handbags. We have conducted an interview with her.

What kind of charities do you work with?

We've worked with over 500 charities. United Way Power of the Purse is a live auction and we donate handbags and gift certificates. Our handbag becomes a tool to help raise money for charities, if a women donates $100 to her favorite cause, she can get $100 off any of our handbags.

Why do women consider 'giving' as an emotional obligation? How does handbags 'funds' this change?

Helping women and children is the way to change the planet. Over seventy percent of people living in poverty around the world are women and children. If women have a roof over their heads and a home free of violence, good and afford health care, then so do the children. It's not just about women, but entire communities. Women are the conduits through which change is made. Last year we started to manufacture leather handbags and hand painted scarves in Haiti. Haiti has an 82% unemployment rate and so by training a mother or a father to learn how to handcraft a handbag they are able to feed, clothe and educate their children rather than being forced to give them up to adoption.

How did you find out about the 'power of handbags' to help other women with less?

When I launched my handbags my first 3 orders were from women in the US military stationed in Iraq. It was amazing to ship my new handbags to a military base in Iraq during a time of war. I felt very honored and I felt like I was doing something to make these women feel good during such a stressful time. Shortly there after I was approached by all these silent auctions to donate handbags and gift certificates. It's been amazing! I feel like my handbags are a symbol to help others in need, to help feed, clothe or heal wounded souls.

What inspires the twisted design of the S-hook that maximizes the bottom half of the S-hook's space? Why is this design significant?

In 2013 I was curious to understand how women "store their handbags." I discovered women were using shower curtain hooks to hang their handbags on their shower racks. I basically took the idea and designed a hook called the Tote Hanger so women could hang their handbags in their closet. I sold $200,000 in the past 16 months. The hooks are sold at www.ToteHanger.com or at the Container Stores.

Which topics do you speak about for the past 6 years? What would you like to explore further in the next 5 years?

The past 6 years in addition to designing my own collection I've been a lot of time designing for other companies as well: Baggallini, Victoria's Secret, Macy's, Nine West, and I've also attended focus groups on handbags in New York and also Japan. I've done handbag trend shopping in London, Paris, Hong Kong, Caribbean, New York: prints, colors, and shapes. For the past 7 years I've been a speaker on the topic of Handbag Design at the Cooper Hewitt Teen Design event hosted by Tim Gunn.

I'm currently a full time student studying Psychoanalysis in Manhattan. While working in the New York fashion industry I became very interested in mental health issues like: models that are bulimic, narcissism, aggression, substance abuse (cocaine is popular). I'm starting to blend fashion and psychoanalysis in my social media to generate awareness:

Examples:

I'm a psycho-analytical handbag designer, I'll fashion your purse by the skeletons you'll place in there. We lost our moral bearings in these egotistical times but we know what bag we want to carry.