“Every single part of your environment creates what you see. I have this sense that people gravitate toward my work not from fashion or trend, but from someplace else. The handbag they choose is really telling where that person is coming from,” says handbag designer Kara Jones.

It’s not about designer logos with this bag. It embraces the essence of nature and functionality with beauty and grace, as feathers are sewn into beautiful fabrics. Designer Kara Jones has studied at the Kansas City Art Institute, earned her Masters of Fine Arts in Fibers from the University of Washington School of Art and has studied fashion design at the prestigious and highly respected Parsons School of Design in New York. She has found that by combining her education in fiber and fashion, she could come up with a design for a handbag that is truly unique, using birds of a feather.

Factio Magazine: How did you get inspired to create a handbag made from feathers?
Kara Jones: The impression of the handbag came to me from the poet and writer Alice Walker and her story about a "familiar" in the Temple of My Familiar. After listening to an interview with the writer speaking about her approach to her own interruptions about creativity, I had a dream where I placed my hand inside a peacock's body and made it sway. Thus, the birth of my handbag collections.

Factio Magazine: What does this handbag say about the woman wearing it? What type of woman carries this bag?
Kara Jones: The handbags possess an international elegance. The KARA MIA handbag supplies both originality of something unheard of and the familiarity of something beautiful and entirely your own. The woman who carries a KARA MIA handbag is not buying a trend or a corporate logo but a sense of originality.

Factio Magazine: What is special about these bags?
Kara Jones: Each handbag is an original work of art. Every KARA MIA is made with careful attention to detail and hours of handiwork. Every handbag has a name to preserve the style and originality in which it came to life in the artist's hands.

Factio Magazine: How long do they take to create?
Kara Jones: The first proto-type took a couple of months to figure out the technique of designing the right look of a handbag. I could produce certain handbags in an eight to ten hour day. The handbags are produced very carefully in precise steps so that I can make them faster then I had before.

Factio Magazine: What does your future look like - will you continue to explore different mediums and materials to create new bags?
Kara Jones: I am creating small Italian Lambskin suede clutches with feather embellishments on the outside, as of now.

I am making envelope pillows with the same look of the handbags, but without the handstraps. I have had a lot of requests from interior designers that wanted my handbags for their homes. I believe that the pillows are a nice fit because it still speaks to a woman’s originality and creativity, but it is for her home not for her body.

I have a new line of neckvines made from Italian lambskin leather that is cut into leaf shapes that drape around the neck like a necklace. Each piece is hand cut and sewn on silk charmeuse ribbons with semi-precious stones to be worn in the same manner like the handbags. KARA MIA is all about transformation and beautiful embellishment for the body and home.