Opelle is luxurious quality and utility informed by our Creative Director’s mastery of form and function. The result is enduring designs with an authentic point of view. A decade later, the iconic silhouettes from our original collection remain as loved as ever.
We are an independent label working out of our diminutive Toronto Atelier. Exquisitely understated, exceptionally useful, handmade leather bags born from a layered and personal creative process.
True luxury is quite indefinable. It’s a chemistry that is hard to articulate but real nonetheless. It’s this intangible sum of the tangible parts that gives an Opelle bag its x factor, a singularity that appeals to the woman who has an instinctive and elemental sense of style.
“I’ve always loved the organic, natural, and beautiful feeling that the name Opelle conveyed. Once I launched the Atelier, the moniker evolved to represent something deeper for me: an uncompromising creative high bar and a restlessness to never stop short of perfection.”
Amy Malcolm, Creative Director
Designer Amy Malcolm had never even purchased a ‘luxury’ handbag, never mind envisioned that one day she would launch an Atelier crafting just that. In retrospect, however, her unconventional path and perspective had been pointing toward Opelle all along.
The Toronto native spent her formative years studying Art, finding Zen on the dance floor, and hitch hiking across the country. Her multi-disciplinary background of formal and non-formal training in Sculpture, Industrial design, Textiles & Women’s Wear is complimented by self-taught skills and techniques. In high school, she went nocturnal making clothes at night to wear the next day. In her 20s, she experimented with costume design and founded a label of exquisite clothing for dolls. Today, it’s a little known fact that Amy designs and sews the wardrobe for every seasonal Opelle shoot herself.
That is perhaps the best way of describing her creative point of view: authentic, uncompromising, and intuitive.
In 2010, when Amy couldn’t find a handbag that was simultaneously functional and aesthetically refined, she turned her attention to leathers and the iconic Lotus bag was created. The collection has expanded to include a line up of permanent styles complimented by two seasonal launches of inspired styles and colour stories.