Tucker and Bloom Interview With The Bag Stage Report

Here is a cool little interview we did with German bag design magazine The Bag Stage Report about the creation of Tucker and Bloom and our roots.

-THE BAG MESSENGER

What is the name of the label and what is the idea behind the name?
Tucker & Bloom: We are a family owned company, with deep roots in design, and a dedication to old world craftsmanship. The name comes from the combination of the two sides of our family.
The Tucker’s were British relatives that settled in Northern New England as ship builders, and whalers in the 1800’s. The Bloom’s were Eastern European craftsmen that moved to America after the First World War and became involved in the New York garment industry. The brand strives to meld these two histories through clean functional design and use of rugged, durable materials.

Where are you from?
The company was founded in 1978 in Boston Mass as Bloom Fine Leather Accesories where it found success in its first line of handbags. It than relocated to Brooklyn NY and is now based in beautiful Nashville TN.

What is the inspiration behind your collection and what kind of materials do you use?
Our bags emphasize organization, and individuality through the use of functional design. We were inspired by a combination of things when designing the collections. The function of the bags came first. We also felt that designing them for domestic manufacturing and having the bags fit into specific lifestyles were important. We currently offer three lifestyle lines Work, Transitions and Leisure. Each line has a particular feel, use and purpose. The materials that are used in the collections are 1980 denier Ballistic Nylon, Heavy Cotton Canvas, Neoprene and Leather (Some
vegetable tanned and some chrome tanned). We have also used some small rubber micro-injection branding patches, as well as satin nickel side release buckles with our logo laser engraved on them.


Since when do you run your own collection?
The Tucker & Bloom bag collections have been available since 2007.

How or why did you start designing bags?    
I started designing bags in the 70’s and was lucky enough to find a mentor in Kosta Spyrololous(a small handbag manufacturer in Boston). I became fascinated with European classical handbag construction, though in my early years the handbags were far from classical construction.  After moving to New York I worked side by side with aging holocaust survivors who passed on knowledge learned from many years in the business. I’m not exactly sure why I have found bag design so endlessly interesting but I continue to learn everyday.  What more could a person hope for in work; passion for the product and the opportunity to learn something new everyday.

Do you exhibit on trade fairs?
It is our desire to make our company a sustainable US manufactured product, with our main distribution direct to consumer and very little wholesale. Although, we are looking at doing some co-branding b2b, and will be offering our Transitions line through the wholesale channel in the spring of 2010.