HAVING created quite an astounding impression on the local dance circuit for many years now, one would have thought that Christine Samuel would stick to her well-choreographed moves. Not so, it seems. These days, the woman responsible for a fair share of the nation’s top dancers having a career in dance has pulled off yet another move poised for success. She’s a bag lady.
Samuel has been making bags for her personal use for quite some time now. But this year she challenged herself: she decided to make it a business and ended up making over 100 bags! Samuel takes pride in “making a creation for every story”, and says each of her bags tells those stories. For now, her bags are targeted at a specific audience for a specific reason.
“Women never get bored with a bag,” she explains. “We go from a small bag to a bigger bag – there’s never enough space. So, basically, the collection is about that.”
Samuel uses white canvas to create her bags, a colour that’s more suitable to women, she says. However, she plans to also use darker coloured canvas in order to capture the men’s attention. Her bags, which come with the signature “CC” logo – which stands for Christie Creations – are all hand-painted by Samuel who boasts about her creative pieces.
“I think the qualities that make my bags unique are the paintings and the styles. I paint all my bags. So from the moment you see the ‘Christie Creations’, you definitely see my artwork,” Samuel said.
Among Samuel’s creative collection are small bags, big bags, 8-inch bags, 10-inch bags, bags for laptops and Ipads – bags for almost every occasion. In fact, if you have a style in mind, just let Samuel know and she will make that bag for you.
Her first job that involved the visual arts aspect of her life was working at Caribelle Batik in the 1980s as a paint-on artist. Her interest was always painting, she said, adding that she wanted to go into visual arts but got the opportunity to do dance first. Even as an entrepreneur focused on bagging the bag business, Samuel sees herself as a dancer first.
“Christine will always be a dancer. That’s Christine and that’s how I express myself. I design bags but I’m also a dancer by profession. I have no interest in opening a business doing this. It just so happened that I got an opportunity to show off my work,” Samuel explained.
So far, Samuel said she has been getting positive feedback from her customers who seem impressed with the variety and quality of work she has been sewing and hand-painting for them. She also specializes in paint-on designs on bed sheets, comforters, curtains and clothing. In fact, she’s currently preparing to launch her clothing line on December 20 where hand-painted clothing will be featured. She is also enthusiastic about getting an opportunity to showcase her bags at Hot Couture.
Samuel was a first-time participant in this year’s Saint Lucia-Taiwan Partnership Trade Exhibition held earlier this month at Baywalk Shopping Mall. For now, Samuel might not have any big plans for opening a full-scale business to market her bags. Nevertheless, it sounds like she’s definitely planning to catch us off-guard, or shall we say, holding the bag when she does. Based on the short-term plans she’s working on, there seems no doubt that the bag lady’s business is already off to more than just a soft start.
“I’m more interested in exhibitions like this and I’m hoping that it wouldn’t be my last. I would like to get the opportunity to do more shows like it. I’m actually getting ready to showcase my bags in ‘Strut for a Cause’ to be held on November 28. I’m doing bags of hope and will be presenting 20 special bags that will highlight issues such as diabetes, cancer and so on,” Samuel stated.
Sounds like quite a plan for a well-thought-out business venture, right?
Check out more about Samuel’s bags on her Facebook page where she posts the processes involved in making the bags from start right down to the final product.