A Hammitt Handbag sample sale was recently announced for this Saturday, November 10 from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. at 934 Hermosa Avenue. Handbags and small leather goods from previous collections will be on sale from 55 to 75 percent off. Limit three per person.
Hammitt Handbags celebrates ten year anniversary
Previously published in Beach Magazine on July 11, 2012
The smell of leather laced the air of the hip Manhattan Beach bar, Twelve + Highland, renamed Twelve + Hammittland for an evening late last April. Where friends normally sip cocktails and eat crispy calamari sat hundreds of soft Hammitt handbags, adorned with the signature gold and silver rivets and classic silhouettes of the 10-year-old brand.
Dozens of women lined up outside, giggly and excited, some peeking through the windows, hungrily eyeing a purse or clutch. At exactly 6:08 p.m., Stephenie Hammitt, the brand’s founding designer, and Tony Drockton, the brand’s Creative Director and CEO opened the doors and warmly welcomed the women who flocked to the “Celebration Sale” from as far as New York City.
Drockton, wearing a colorful fuchsia plaid sports jacket, quickly moved out of the way as women scampered into the restaurant-converted-trunk show to scoop up armloads of soft leather.
Without looking at the bags in their wake, many simply shoveled up piles and moved to a less crowded area to decide which ones to buy. Mary Davenport, who drove from Santa Monica for the sale, held four heavy handbags on her arm as she grappled for a hanging toffee-colored “Bistro” purse. Another woman who spotted the exact same bag relinquished the find to Davenport after initially giving her a snarling glance, and helped her unattach it from a curtain rod on the wall.
“These purses are just phenomenal,” said Davenport, struggling to carry her armloads of handbags. “You can’t beat the quality or style.”
Hammitt, a tall blonde who towered over most of the women, wandered through the crowd helping them choose which bags to take home.
“No, no, no,” Hammitt said to two women shuffling through a pile of colorful rectangular “Getty” clutches and a pile of distinctly riveted “Vine” hobo bags.
“This is the one you want,” she said after picking through the pile and finding a unique, coffee-colored “Montana Messenger,” one of the brand’s most popular crossbody bags.
Humble beginnings
Stephenie Hammitt, a mid-30s English major, never expected to get into fashion. In fact, it was her identical twin sister, Trisha Fedrick, who had studied fashion design atLong BeachState.
“I was a total tomboy,” said Hammitt. “Getting me to carry a handbag was like pulling teeth. Everything was always in my pockets.”
Whenever she received a bag for Christmas or her birthday, she’d always return it for something else.
In 2002, five years after graduating from Long Beach State, she was getting ready to attend a barbeque and realized she couldn’t hold a tampon in her pocket anymore. She finally needed a purse.
“I didn’t have anything,” said Hammitt. “I was pretty poor and didn’t have the money to go to Nordstrom, so I designed my first clutch that day.”
Earlier that year, her sister had introduced her to an aspiring belt designer. As a favor, Hammitt drove the designer to warehouses to help pick-out leather and hardware for his line. Their fated meeting sparked her interest in handbag-design.
“She got attracted to the process and it just fell into place,” Fedrick said.
That same clutch that was birthed out of a chance meeting and necessity, which she wore to the barbeque that afternoon, is her biggest seller today.
“Everyone at the barbeque commented on it and the next thing you know I was cutting leather and attaching rivets,” Hammitt said.
After cutting and pounding her clutches at home by hand, she traveled to a couple of high-end stores in downtown Los Angeles, including Fred Segal, and sold every clutch she had created.
“I went to some of the top places in town and they were like, ‘We love it!’ I got really lucky,” Hammitt said.
Even though her pieces were selling out, they were still hand-made, raw edged clutches.
“Steph would pound those rivets herself,” said Fedrick. “I would be on the phone with her and she would be like hold on a second… pound, pound, pound… She’s come a long way.”
The next year she met with a manufacturer who added a zipper to her designs and helped her understand stitching.
“The manufacturer educated me on all those little details I wasn’t educated in,” said Hammitt. “The next year I got really lucky and Angelina Jolie was seen with one of my bags and that just made it a global sensation. For me I just was really overwhelmed with how big it happened so fast.”
Since then, A-list stars like Kelly Ripa, Lindsay Lohan, and Ashley Greene have been seen wearing Hammitts. They have also been featured in almost every major fashion magazine.
Even with the turbo-speed success of her handbag line, Hammitt knew she wanted to stay with a classic aesthetic.
“Something spoke to me about the symmetry of the rivets,” said Hammitt. “I’m very committed to the design aesthetic. A lot of people ask me why I haven’t changed their look—but my stuff’s very distinctive, you can spot a Hammitt from a mile away.”
Hammitt bags, Drockton explained, are the epitome of South Bay women. They are made for an educated, sophisticated woman living a casual lifestyle, he said. “A Hammitt woman knows what she wants and doesn’t need to flash the label around town,” Drockton said.
“I love designer bags, but I like something more subdued,” said Alexandra Duda, 30, whose boyfriend’s sister bought her an orange “Avalon” at the most recent Celebration Sale. “I like that people know they’re a Hammitt because of the rivets, but they aren’t flashy with a big logo.”
Duda also loves her Hammitt because of the versatility and the quality of leather they’re made out of. Recently she was able to jump on the back of a motorcycle with her Hammitt attached to her back after adjusting the straps from an over-the-shoulder to a backpack.
Hammitt sometimes finds it difficult to stay within the classic style without getting too trendy. However, she finds that the bags she has been designing since the beginning are still her top sellers today.
The brand’s most popular handbag, the “Montana Messenger.” Photo by BJ Formento.World-wide reach
After designing by herself for six years, the pressure of owning such a fast-growing business was starting to wear on her. That’s when she brought in friend and business-wiz Tony Drockton to help manage the company.
“Tony came when I was burned out,” said Hammitt. “Just the toll of running a business on your own is tough. He came in and was really hungry to take the company to another level. I always had the aspiration and vision to do that, but my strengths went only so far.”
A staple of the Hammitt luxary handbag line, the Westwood.Now, instead of Hammitt bags just selling in a few specificLos Angeleslocations, they sell in almost all 50 states and six countries, including China, Austria, Canada, Mexico and Haiti. Instead of focusing on all aspects of the business, Hammitt is better able to focus on the Los Angeles-inspired designs.
“It’s wild how sometimes the chips fall where they do,” said Hammitt. “When you have success like we’ve had you don’t just walk away from it, you keep climbing the steps. I started at step one and I would say I’m halfway there.”
Another popular handbag, named after LAX.Hammitt is proud that even though a lot of the material is imported from all over the world, all of the bags are designed and manufactured inLos Angeles. Most of the designs are also named after various parts of the city like Westwood, Brentwoode and LAX.
“I’m just so thankful of my fans and the women who have embraced my brand,” said Hammitt. “It’s just one of those things that is wild for me, I never get tired of seeing a Hammitt on a person walking down the street.”
Surprisingly, Hammitt only has about three bags of her own.
“Wherever I go, people buy my bags off of me,” said Hammitt. “I get so excited when people stop me and ask about a bag that I’m wearing, I just say, ‘Take it!’”
From raw to refined edges, the Hammitt design has changed and evolved, yet somehow stayed classic to its Los Angeles roots.
“The bags speak for themselves,” Jacqui Zehe, a 36-year-old saleswoman at the local Manhattan Beachboutique Cami, said. “[Hammitt’s] a local from Manhattan Beach, so they have a really great local draw.”
The designers, Hammitt along with a select group of in-house men and women based out of Hermosa Beach, note that the bags are versatile and can be taken from day to night effortlessly.
“A Hammitt is not for a reason or a season,” said Drockton. “They are for a lifetime.”
Zehe, who sells Hammitts to repeat customers, explained the Hammitt aesthetic as, “a clean look, but the rivets make them a little bit edgy.”
Hammitt bags are frequently featured on television shows such as the locally filmed CW show 90210 and the New York-based Gossip Girl. They can also be seen on the arms of most of the main characters on the HBO series, Entourage. The brand also collaborated with the television show True Blood, to create a signature line designed specifically for the each main character in the show.
“There are some really great designs and brands coming out of Southern California,” said Drockton. “The world really looks for inspiration from us.”
Hammitt collections can range in price from $195 for their smallest clutch, the “Getty,” to $1450 for the “LAX International.” But, according to Drockton, their sweet spot is between $485 to $675. They can be purchased at different locations in theSouthBay, as well as both coasts and 12 international locations. For Hammitt, her goal is to make each customer happy and create a classic yet functional part of a woman’s everyday ensemble.
“A Hammitt’s meant to be worn,” said Drockton. “They’re no good in the closet.”
Hammitt’s slogan, “L.A. stitched into every bag,” is particularly important to the company because of their four local manufacturers and their attention to local trends and specific spotlights on parts of the city. They also design each bag based on function and test samples on women in the area. Drockton can often been seen talking to Hammitt devotees, asking them about their bags and making sure they can fit everything they need inside.
“What a woman puts into her bag is kind of her little secret,” said Drockton. “We want to make sure it is beautiful but functional.”
A recent addition to the Hammitt handbag family, the “Sunset Strip Collection,” were named after Hollywood hot spots like the Viper Room, the Roxbury, the Sunset Strip and the Key Club.
For the Sunset Strip collection, the handbags are the epitome of a “night on the town.” The “Viper” clutch is just big enough to hold your ID, lip-gloss and your phone. The “Roxy,” named for the famous theatre, is a perfectly sized messenger for a fun evening of dancing.
“We try to make each name match the aesthetic of the bag,” said Drockton. “We want people to connect to more than just leather and zippers.”
The brand’s cult-like following continues to grow larger by the year while Drockton and Hammitt continue to expand where the handbags can be purchased.
Because of their surprise success with earlier designs, the Hammitt brand remain classic. They will soon be expanding from handbags to also sell iPad covers and will launch a jewelry line in July or August.
“[The South Bay] is a great place to test a product,” said Drockton. “There is a really great mix of people in the area. If it can become popular here, it can work anywhere.”
For Hammitt, she still gets a little thrill every time she sees one of her designs walk down the street.
“They truly bring joy to women,” Hammitt said. “It’s wild.”
