Aeka began with an obsession.

I came to velvet first. Not to embroidery, not to bags, to the fabric itself. The way colour lives inside it rather than on its surface. The way it shifts and deepens depending on the light, on the angle, on the hand that holds it. Velvet is already doing something before anyone has touched it with a needle.

Embroidery changes what that surface can become. Thread laid into velvet pile doesn't sit flat the way it does on cotton or silk, it grips the fabric, picks up its depth, and becomes part of it. A stitched motif on velvet has shadow and dimension that no flat ground can produce. A bead set into it catches the light against a surface that is itself always moving with light. The two enhance each other in a way that is difficult to describe and immediately obvious in person.

For years I searched for bags that matched what I carried in my imagination. I never found them. So I made them instead.

Every design begins in my study, where I draw each pattern by hand — flowers, ferns, birds, ocean creatures, constellations. Every design I create is like a safe place for escape. The world interpreted through my eyes, then passed to our artisans, who spend seventy hours translating each drawing into embroidery, stitch by stitch.

I have watched this process hundreds of times and it still moves me. 

The collections are limited to ten because that is simply what handmade means. One artisan. One design. Seventy hours. When it's done, it's done.

I wanted women who own an Aeka bag to feel what I feel when a new piece leaves the studio, that something rare and considered has found its way into the world.

That is what I set out to build. I think we're getting there.