THE CARLOS BAG
There’s something friendly about the shape, which one could easily imagine serving as a conversation starter between two strangers in the street or elsewhere. The Carlos bag is a magic beacon, an object of erotic projection that stimulates the touch and the imagination. Its unctuous, glossy shape resembles a gigantic, generously proportioned clamshell. The bag is the result of a collaboration between the artist Carlos Peñafiel and LEMAIRE.
Carlos Peñafiel is a self-taught artist born in Chile in 1949, who currently resides in France. He collaborated with Pierre Cardin in 1986 to create leather shoes inspired by the surrealist painting Le Modèle Rouge by René Magritte. His leather bags and masks were exhibited at the Museum of Eroticism in Paris in 2010.
Each bag is an artisanal work of art requiring precise adjustments based on the reaction of each leather to the action of the press and ambient air. A magnetised metal framework maintains the bag’s shape and closes it securely. The Carlos bag is waxed by hand to achieve a transparent sheen similar to the waxy texture of a candle. Unique, delicate, and inventive, this process honours the work-worn hands that craft the bags, as well as the organic qualities of the leather.
Peñafiel worked closely with Tuscan artisans to hone the innovative techniques required to produce an organic shape molded entirely in leather. Each irregularity in the artist’s original resin mold has been faithfully reproduced, from the uneven curves to the asymmetry and interrupted lines. The leather is formed in a metal press engraved with the shell shape of the original mold.
Photography by Estelle Hanania