Gerda Retter Design

Sharp angles, Nordic restraint, and a very small studio in Tartu.

Gerda Retter founded her brand in 2016, while still studying leather design at Tartu Art College, which is either admirable confidence or a sensible way to sidestep the graduate job market. Everything is still handcrafted in her studio at Aparaaditehas (the Widget Factory), a converted industrial works in Tartu, Estonia. The pieces are geometric and architectural: clean folds, deliberate corners, a restrained Nordic palette, and not one unnecessary buckle. Browse the full bags edit or the wider women's accessories collection.

Bags and jewellery. That is the entire list.

An accessories brand that has stayed an accessories brand, which is rather more unusual than it ought to be. Structured leather bags, plus a line of jewellery cut from the same design logic. Retter has been nominated for the Hong Kong Design-a-Bag Award and Estonia's BRUNO Design Award more than once, and showed at Venice Design Week in 2022, which tells you something about the standard. Find more from the continent in our Europe brands collection, browse other women-led brands, or shop by location.

One good bag beats a drawer of near misses.

Pair with pieces from women's fashion, or hand one to someone who notices how a thing is put together, in our gifts edit. Browse everyone we stock in the brand directory, or read the stories behind the work in the journal.