TikTok Made Pierre Laborde’s Bags Famous. Can He Keep Up?
When Pierre Laborde first began peddling his handmade handbags at the Grand Bazaar flea market on the Upper West Side almost a decade ago, he often didn’t sell any bags at all. As the years went on, he was content if he sold 10 or 15 styles from his booth each weekend. So he was shocked when, one morning in mid-November, his entire stock of colorful leather bags, priced between $275 and $1200, sold out in less than 30 minutes. So many people showed up before the market opened to shop his designs that the line turned into chaos as 500 shoppers fought over the 100-plus pieces he had for sale. One woman even flew in from Augusta, Georgia, just to see him. She bought two bags and went right back to La Guardia.
“I couldn’t believe it,” says Laborde. “I’m happy and stressed.” Now, his inbox is full of requests from desperate fans offering him extra money to pick up the bags from his apartment. Over 1,000 people are signed up for updates on his website. His brother heard from someone in Canada who wants to invest in his line and sell his bags in Dubai.
“The pictures, the videos, really didn’t do it justice,” says Fatou Magassa, a recent graduate who, like many of his new fervent fans, discovered Laborde on TikTok and visited the bazaar three times in the past two months. “The pricing was just so good, like it felt too good to be true as well — for the quality, for the fact that it’s genuine leather. And he hand-makes these bags.”
I met Laborde at his apartment and studio in West Harlem. His living room, packed to the brim with gilded rococo antique side tables and giant portrait paintings, is a tribute to his baroque tastes and years spent at flea markets. It also serves as a showroom. Against the wall, leaning on the edge of a couch, sits a row of asymmetrical leather clutches that were among his first designs. But in the center of the room are a few examples of what have become the most coveted bags in New York City: colorful cowhide-leather slouchy statement bags with double-sided clasp handles. The smaller size is a boxy rectangle; larger ones are hobo-style crescents. Each bag comes with an extra strap that turns it into a cross-body. The most striking styles are made with cowhide dyed with neon blues and oranges. Inside, the bags are full of more color — printed silk linings and two deep pockets in two colors, never matching. Laborde’s designs are joyful and distinctive, clearly made with care and well under $1,000 — what feels like an impossible combination in today’s market where the space between shoddy fast-fashion dupes and overpriced luxury bags is dominated by practical but forgettable smooth leather bags with gold-stamped logos.
Laborde started making his clasp bags about three years ago, first in smooth leather. “No one cared for it,” he says, until he began making them in cowhide. It’s clear that his work is his life. He dreams his bags up in his home studio, an overstuffed room with two long tables and an industrial sewing machine covered in paint specks. Leather is piled everywhere, as are stacks of patterns and straps. He opens a drawer bursting with brightly colored lining fabric. A deep closet in the hallway is full of even more rolls of leather and cowhide. One of the benefits of working from home is that he often stays up all night cutting fabrics, sewing his straps, and hand-painting their edges. Until six months ago, he made every bag from start to finish himself at home. Now, he has someone in the Garment District who helps with the sewing, but he still cuts all the materials and makes the straps himself. “Quality control for me is so important; maybe that’s why it takes me a long time,” he says.
Laborde’s shoppers have slowly and steadily increased over the last year since a fashion influencer posted about him in September 2024. Then, another series of TikToks in October and November led to the sellout-day frenzy on November 16. He’s aiming to have another 250 bags to sell when he returns to the bazaar on December 7. To prevent creating another mob, his niece is helping him set up an online (free) timed ticket system. In January, he plans to take a break from the bazaar for a few weeks and make 200 bags to sell on his website.
“I was in Whole Foods a week ago, and a woman came up to me, like, ‘Is that one of those bags from TikTok?’” says Brittney Russell, a vintage-designer-handbag collector who recently added two Pierre Laborde bags to her closet. Her videos about buying and wearing his bags are among her most viewed on TikTok.
Laborde, a Haitian immigrant, graduated with a degree in womenswear from the Fashion Institute of Technology in 2000. But his career in fashion didn’t turn out as he had hoped. While he made wedding dresses on the side for friends of friends, he never managed to find a job in the industry designing clothes. At some point over a decade ago — he’s careful not to reveal his age — he hit a breaking point while working long hours at a knitwear company, measuring garments sent over from China and Korea to confirm the sizes were correct. “I took my 401(k) and I was like, ‘Okay one life to live,’” he says. He went back to FIT to study accessory design and slowly started making bags out of his apartment and selling them at the flea market, where he found loyal clients before TikTok. But there were points when he thought about finding a different job, especially during the pandemic: “With everything that’s going on now, it’s a good thing I didn’t give up.”
A month ago, Laborde hired an assistant who he is training to cut fabrics and run his Instagram account. He is looking for another person to help with the growing demand, and he hopes to one day move into a separate studio. But he has no interest in mass-producing his bags or taking on an investor. “I don’t want to be nobody’s slave, you know, working for somebody,” says Laborde. “It’s good to be comfortable, but money is not happiness.”
What does make him happy is meeting his customers at the Grand Bazaar. “We talk about everything — products, fashion, colors, and all that stuff — which I love,” he says. “I get to talk to people, they get to ask me about my story.” He’s trying to not let the pressure of all this attention get to him, and he can’t help but feel sad for anyone who wanted a bag and couldn’t buy one. He may have sold out, but don’t expect Laborde to sell out anytime soon. “I want to be able to create the way I want to create,” he says. “I want to be able to use all my colors, you know?”
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