Stella Soomlais

A leather bag you can take apart with a screwdriver. On purpose.

Stella Soomlais started in Tallinn in 2004, making one-off bags for people who wanted something specific and were prepared to ask. Two decades on, the studio and shop share an entrance in Telliskivi Creative City, and the bags are designed and made in Estonia by the studio's own craftspeople, in vegetable-tanned leather that improves with handling instead of merely surviving it. The construction is the clever part: straps and pockets are screwed into place rather than stitched, so a worn handle can be swapped instead of mourned, and the leather can be recovered once the bag has had its innings. Browse the full bags edit or the women's accessories collection.

Gold in the Responsible Business Index. Not a slogan.

Estonia runs a Responsible Business Index, and Stella Soomlais has worked its way up it: Bronze in 2018, Silver in 2019, Gold in 2020 and again in 2022. The studio also took a special award for social entrepreneurship at the Estonian Responsible Entrepreneurship Forum in 2020. It services and repairs every piece it makes, which is a considerably harder promise to keep than a paragraph about values. Find more from the continent in our Europe brands collection, browse other women-led brands, or explore the wider sustainable brands edit.

Buy once, then keep bothering them about it.

The range runs to totes, backpacks, weekend bags, clutches, wallets and keychains, so there is a version of this for most lives. Look through tote bags, shoulder bags and crossbody, clutch bags and purses, or find something for a person who will genuinely use it in our gifts edit.