From art history to Via d'Azeglio: how I became a bag designer

There is a smell I don't forget. My mother's leather bags, when I opened her wardrobe as a child. The dry sound of the clasps. And that oval cameo on the bedside table, handed down for generations.

Gamberini Bag was born from those three memories. The third one changed the other two.

Bologna, and art as a compass

I studied art history at DAMS, the arts faculty of the University of Bologna, the oldest in the Western world. It taught me to read objects: to look for the sense behind every shape, to understand why some things stay and others disappear.

Then I spent years curating contemporary art exhibitions, for institutions and for private collectors. I told other people's stories, until I wanted to write my own.

The spark: my daughter Nina

It was Nina who gave me the push. Becoming a mother changed the way I look at time, and the way I use it: if I wanted to build something, I had to start now.

In 2014 I founded Gamberini Bag. In 2015 I opened the shop in Via d'Azeglio 5/A, in the heart of Bologna. It has been my home ever since.

The cameo that doesn't stay still

My mother's cameo was handed down: it changed hands once, in a whole lifetime. That seemed too little to me.

The Gamberini cameo is one you change yourself, whenever you want. The same object that used to be inherited now follows you while you change: by morning, by season, by mood.

I don't follow trends. I tell who you are.

Every bag comes out of the hands of artisans a few kilometres from here, and it carries two stories: mine, and the story of the hands that sewed it.

You write the third one.