Tina Lutz Morris on the background of her brand Lutz Morris: "My brand should be a homage to the craftsmanship of my homeland"

Crossbody bag "Parker M Soft," around 1230 euros. Lutz Morris

And anyway: Our conversation is less about working for other brands – after graduating, Tina Lutz Morris first worked for Issey Miyake in Paris and Tokyo, then for Calvin Klein in New York, and later for Lutz & Patmos – but rather about her own label. Once again, it bears two surnames, this time hers and her husband's: In 2018, she launched her bag brand Lutz Morris in Berlin, where the small family lived for a few years. Not only the English part of the company name, but also the initial spark came from her American husband: For their first Christmas together in the German capital, he gave her a leather box, "for my drawing pencils on my desk," as she recounts. A direct hit: "I was immediately fascinated, not only because it reminded me a bit of the cigar box my grandfather used to have." Tina Lutz Morris was particularly enthusiastic about the metal frame, which would ultimately keep her busy for months.

To learn more about the construction, the designer tracked down the frame's manufacturer, a company in Offenbach, Hesse. "Through a conversation with the boss, who once had 150 employees but, at the time we met, was only keeping his company afloat with two short-time workers, I realized that traditional handicrafts are completely neglected in Germany ." Offenbach, she says, is the best example of this: The city on the Main River, with its many large tanneries, saddleries, and metal manufacturers, was once considered a specialist leather center – today, at most, the German Leather Museum located there reminds us of this. Tina Lutz Morris was also to experience for herself that artisans in Germany, unlike in France or Italy, can hardly rely on state subsidies. Shortly before the Offenbach entrepreneur retired and closed his business, she had at least wanted to save his frame-making machines. But the transport to another factory in North Rhine-Westphalia alone would have cost tens of thousands of euros; She was unable to secure a subsidy for this. So the machines were scrapped. Tina Lutz Morris at least bought as many metal frames as possible from the Offenbach-based company to construct her first bag models based on.

"I had already decided back then that I wanted to do as much as possible in Germany – my brand should also be a homage to the craftsmanship in my homeland."

Many years later, the delicate gold-plated frames remain the hallmark of her brand: sometimes they serve as the opening for buttery-soft leather bags, sometimes as the basic construction for sturdy casket bags, and sometimes as a small extra compartment attached to the front of larger models. However, Tina Lutz Morris can no longer rely on leftovers from Offenbach; they have long since been used up. Today, the 24-carat gold -plated metal frames come from Italy, as customers learn on her brand's website. There, there's a map of Europe that shows where Tina Lutz Morris sources materials and ingredients, where she has her bag models made, and the transport routes between the individual factories. Like rays of sunlight, these radiate from a craft workshop near Düsseldorf where the designer has her bags manufactured – several rays emanate from Germany, some from Italy, but none reach further afield, even into non-European countries.