Bologna-based luxury brand Boarini Milanesi broke a world record last year when it launched a new version of its Parva Mea model, the most expensive handbag in the world. The eye-watering price-tag supports rather than detracts from the product’s circular credentials, the company argues.

Longevity equals circularity; the longer a consumer keeps a handbag, the better. If original owners pass the products on to daughters and granddaughters and the new owners keep and love the bags for years, too, the product lasts even longer, is even more sustainable and even more in sync with the circular economy.

One incentive bag manufacturers can offer to convince customers to keep products for a long time is to make those products expensive. In 2020, Bologna-based brand Boarini Milanesi took this idea to a new limit, adding a bag to its Parva Mea range that comes with a price tag of €6 million, or more than $7 million. That’s €6 million for one bag, a new record. Guinness World Records lists the most valuable handbag until now as the 1001 Nights Diamond Purse from Geneva-based jewellery brand Mouawad. It incorporates more than 4,500 diamonds. It was valued in 2010 at a mere $3.8 million.

In-house artisans

Entrepreneurs Carolina Boarini and Matteo Rodolfo Milanesi had not even founded their company then. They made their first handbag, a model called Elegantia, in 2014. They then spent the next two years perfecting every detail before formally launching Boarini-Milanesi. In September 2018, they opened a showroom in a nineteenth-century palazzo in central Bologna. A new, proprietary workshop followed a few months later, allowing Boarini Milanesi to control all aspects of production, with in-house artisans taking charge of everything from leather-cutting to final stitching.

Each of its bags is made-to-order, entirely by hand, with the owner’s name engraved onto the leather. Ms Boarini and Mr Milanesi have met most of their customers through private, invitation-only showcase events in high-end hotels in London, Monte Carlo, New York and other cities, using these to generate orders.

Prices at Boarini Milanesi have typically ranged from €1,950 for the Ninfa Red Carpet model to €50,000 for a crocodile-leather version of the Elegantia. But the new Parva Mea has blown this out of the water. The new bag is made from alligator leather, with ten white-gold butterflies encrusted with diamonds, sapphires and tourmalines for decoration. It intends to make only three of these bags, with its artisans devoting 1,000 hours of work to each one.

Waste avoidance

From the €6 million the Bologna-based luxury brand hopes to bring in from each one, it has said it will donate €800,000 from each sale to ocean-cleaning programmes. In comments to media about this idea, Ms Boarini has said that raising awareness of the need to protect the oceans of the world was one of the main drivers of the project. Another is this wider idea of consuming fewer things and of investing instead in objects that will last for years and retain their value.

Using leather instead of synthetic materials in any bag, including €6 million ones, is also good for stopping ocean plastic pollution. Leather has a lower impact on the environment and is more sustainable, the brand insists, adding: “The reason we believe this is that leather is an extremely durable material. A handbag made from leather can last generations. In this way, we can go back to buying fewer items and keeping them for longer, like we used to do in the past. This reduces our impact on the environment.” In contrast, products made from synthetic materials often become damaged quite quickly. People throw these ruined products away and buy  new ones, creating high volumes of waste.

Conversations about conservation

Boarini Milanesi has been a frequent contributor to the conservation conversation that never seems to go away when it comes to exotic leather. It has drawn up its own research paper on the subject. In it, it quotes Dr Daniel Natusch, a wildlife biologist specialising in reptiles, who chairs a specialist group at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. He says: “Buy a crocodile bag and you save five crocodiles.” The research paper presents three scientific arguments for alligator and crocodile bags being a responsible use of resources.

The first of these is that crocodiles and alligators are viewed by communities living in close contact with them as dangerous and the source of a threat to people and to farm animals. Programmes for the responsible control of crocodiles and alligators have been successful in a number of countries, leading to an increase in population numbers. From 1960 to date in Louisiana, the alligator population has gone from being in danger of extinction to reaching more than 2 million in the wild.

Research the Italian company has carried out suggests that the eco-system of wetlands, where the reptiles live, is of great importance in the battle against carbon emissions. They are effective in converting carbon-dioxide into oxygen through photosynthesis. Sustainable crocodile and alligator farming serves as a good incentive for local communities to keep their wetlands intact, rather than try to use the space for farming or housing.

Finally, sustainable crocodile and alligator programmes generate revenue for communities that are often economically disadvantaged. Carolina Boarini has said she wants to use these research findings to break down “fake news that influences public opinion, putting this delicate safeguarding work at risk”. Co-founder, Matteo Rodolfo Milanesi, said he thought luxury brands that have made public commitments to stop using exotic leathers are making a mistake. He described these moves as marketing ploys “to capture an audience that ignores reality” and he said they could put the conservation of some reptile species and the wellbeing of vulnerable communities in jeopardy.

Message to world leaders

Carolina Boarini is far from new to sustainability thinking or to presenting her ideas about it. While she was still at school, she was one of four students who represented Italy at a special fringe event for young people at the thirty-first G8 Summit in 2005. The summit that year took place in Scotland and Ms Boarini and young people from the other G8 countries held workshops and discussions before drawing up their own communiqué. Twelve of their number attended a special ceremony at the main G8 gathering to hand the document over to the head of the host government, then UK prime minister, Tony Blair. Carolina Boarini was one of the 12.

The communiqué consisted of eight points, each of which called on G8 leaders to do a better job of looking after the environment and helping people in developing economies. In the third point, prophetically for Ms Boarini, they insisted that it was necessary to create an international system for deciding if products are environmentally friendly. And they asked for a symbol that would make it immediately clear to consumers if a product was sustainable, with careful monitoring to make sure brands using the symbol were meeting the necessary sustainability standards.

While she and Matteo Rodolfo Milanesi wait for an international system like this to come along, they will continue to find their own ways to argue against greenwashing. 

The new Parva Mea, the world’s most expensive handbag.
All Credits: Boarini Milanesi

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