Jola V. Designs is my niche accessories label, creating handmade bags, home décor items, foot-wear and other accessories from re-claimed or locally sourced quality materials; mostly leather.

I am self-trained designer. My aesthetics and tastes developed with the North European landscape in the background, and I look to my heritage for inspiration and solutions in my today’s creative process. My designs reflect that simplicity and strength of construction today.

I made my first handbag in Vancouver, spring of 2009, after not being able to find one at the shops locally. It generated interest and orders from strangers and friends. This interest was what encouraged me to make more pieces and eventually, an idea of a home-based business emerged.

Jola V. Designs was launched later that same year. Ever since then we have been committed to the slow fashion, creating original, unique and long serving products from several types of leather: BC sourced and tanned Wild hides (elk and bison); “Orphaned” or recycled, and USA tanned vegetable-tan leathers.

I design, sketch and sew the bags myself, using only my own original patterns. At the early stages of my line, I learned to sew leather, upgraded equipment, and developed the necessary patience to get the materials to co-operate. My line grew through pure trial-and-error process, with some early designs becoming immediate “hits” that we still carry today.

My new passion is to look for techniques in other disciplines of art, and apply those to leather, where possible: such as Ebru-dying, weaving, boiling leather, etc.