Bushmills to Vogue: Meet the NI mum behind a handbag brand loved by celebrities

News Letter

Love Your Local..Karen Yates, co-founder of Taylor Yates in Bushmills, turned a milestone gift into a purpose-led luxury handbag brand that’s now standing shoulder to shoulder with the biggest names in fashion and being worn by celebrities and influencers including Amanda Holden, Grace Beverley and and Hannah Scott

Transcript

00:00Hi, I'm Karen Yates and welcome to Chair Yates, our studio store in Bushmills. The store is full

00:19of ladies handbags and some other products that I've designed with my daughter. They're all

00:25designed here in Bushmills and then made in various parts of England at the moment.

00:31All of our shapes are named after the women that I grew up with. So we have Alice, who's

00:37my nana, Tilly was my mum, Agnes, who was her bridesmaid and lots of strong women that helped

00:44me when I was younger. The handbags are also specifically made from the leather you normally

00:51use for jackets and gloves, so they're really soft and really light. We believe they're

00:56the softest and lightest handbag that's on the market at the moment. We're also now proud

01:01to be a B Corp, so sustainability has always been at the centre of everything that we do.

01:07We try not to waste anything, and I'll show you in a moment, but we make other products

01:12from the waist leather. Agnes is one of our best-selling shapes, and it's a really slaggy,

01:19like tote. You can get a laptop in it. And actually, Grace Beverly this year talked about

01:24it being the best ever work bag, so we're really, really proud of that. We also, this

01:29year, took Agnes into a made-to-water model in suede. This season, there's loads of suede

01:35of our own. We think, again, it's worked really, really well. This inspired us to then actually

01:40change our business model. So you can see here we have a range of different sort of styles,

01:47with all of, specifically here, with all of the chocolate colours for the autumn. These

01:55were launched a few weeks ago, and ultimately now, what you're able to do is take any of

02:00our shapes and have them made in the colour that you would like. This year, we're really,

02:06really proud to have designed two new shapes. First of all, we have Tilly. Again, made to

02:13order. It's the Tilly clutch. So you can now have that with the chain, or as a clutch.

02:21Customers looking absolutely loving it, and we're really, really pleased to have given Tilly,

02:25one of our best sellers, an uptake. And then finally, I really want to show you our first

02:31weekend bag. This is a, um, a version of a bag that we were lucky enough to make for Rory

02:38McIlroy, Dunluce Lodge, and commissioned us to design this for him. So at the open input

02:44rush, just down the road, where he was given, um, one of these bags, um, embossed for him,

02:51um, in a beautiful, um, green colour. So that's, um, again, a really exciting new, uh, adventure

02:57for us. And, uh, it's lined with Italian Alcantara, and it's a really, really looks gorgeous light.

03:03Um, we came back.

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