It’s all over the news: The Columbian handbag designer has arrived in the US, where she is wanted in the Southern District of Florida for allegedly importing and selling bags made of the skins of endangered animals

Nancy Gonzalez. Illustration: Just So

Unless you are really, really in love with exotic-skin handbags, you probably have not heard of Nancy Gonzalez—the brand or the woman. And if you do not already own one of Ms Gonzalez’s expensive, supposedly well-loved bags, there is the likelihood that you may never be able to. The Columbian designer and founder of her eponymous brand was recently extradited to the United States (together with two of her employees as co-defendants), where she is wanted for allegedly using illegal animal skins to make her bag products and then having them sold stateside in some of the most prominent stores. Ms Gonzales was, in fact, arrested in July last year after joint investigation between Columbian police and their counterparts. She now faces, if convicted of all charges, a potential 25-year jail term and a fine of US$500,000 (or about S$700,000).

According to media reports, Ms Gonzales used mules to help to “smuggle” the finished products to her key market—the U.S., mainly in New York, where the bags are available in high-end stores, such as Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue (globally, her products were sold through more than 300 doors, as well as e-commerce sight such as Lyst). They were even available here at Isetan Orchard in 2015, two years after the brand opened their first stand-alone store in Hong Kong, at the IFC Mall. Before the COVID pandemic, between 2016 and 2019, it is reported that through her stockists, more than 200 products made from caiman (endangered American crocodilian) and python skins were available for sale. Her celebrity customers included Britney Spears, Jessica Alba, Kylie Jenner, and Sofía Vergara. In the movie version of Sex and the City, Kristen Davis and Kim Cattrall were seen toting Nancy Gonzalez exotic-skin bags. It is, however, not known if the stars were using the contraband.

Ms Gonzalez in the hands of the police at the El Dorado International Airport, Bogotá. Photo: Columbian Migration Office/AP

So illustrious her name was and so design-notable her products were that the Cali-made Nancy Gonzalez bags were collected and exhibit in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. While most retail stores have discontinued carrying her line, two products, conceived in collaboration with the American artist Michele Oka Doner, are still listed as part of the museum’s collection (at The Costume Institute, to be precise). The Met considers her work to be “characterized by the unusual manipulation of exotic skins”. It does not state the provenance of those skins. There is even a coffee table book, Nancy Gonzales: Columbia, New York, published by Assouline in 2010, that celebrates her creativity. Within the pages, she is described as an “exotic skin innovator”. It makes no mention of innovation on skins of endangered animals.

Nancy Gonzales was born in 1953, in the Columbian city of Cali (officially Santiago de Cali), southwest of the capital Bogotá. She told Architectural Digest in 2017 that she grew up “in a house alive with children, nannies, friends, and dogs”. It is not hard to see that the family was well-to-do. When she started professionally, it was not in bag-making. In fact, in the beginning, she made belts from crocodile skins, a material easily available in Columbia. When she introduced bags, around 1988, hers was still largely a local brand. According to popular telling, she enlisted her son Santiago Gonzalez to help in the business. Impressed with his mother’s designs, his friends urged him to market her bags more aggressively. As fate would have it, an aunt’s neighbour happened to know the late Dawn Mello—at the time, Bergdorf Goodman’s president (she had returned to the company after leaving Gucci, where she was hired in 1989, and soon scouted Tom Ford to join the brand). A meeting with Mr Gonzales was arranged.

One of Nancy Gonzalez’s most popular styles: the clutch in exotic skins. Photo: Nancy Gonzales/Facebook

The introduction and the viewing of the bags took place at that aunt’s stateside apartment—it was conveniently situated in New York. The young man, then still a student at the Savannah College of Art and Design in the American state of Georgia, managed to impress Ms Mello with what he brought with him, and she ordered 30 pieces, comprising just eight styles. Nancy Gonzalez debuted at Bergdorf Goodman in 1998. At the time, mother and son thought that identifying their products as Columbian might not give their brand name high-end resonance, so they added ‘New York’ beneath it. Those 30 bags sold out quickly. In a few years, Nancy Gonzalez would be described by the media as “New York’s household name”. Bergdorf Goodman had remained her biggest supporter.

The success would be repeated in Europe, where the bags were stocked in Harrods and Harvey Nichols, and culminated in the 2016 collaboration with the American artist KAWS, featuring his signature Xs-as-eyes emblazoned on the bags—unsurprisingly in exotic skins. Heightening the clout of the Nancy Gonzalez name was where the bags were sold: at the Parisian multi-label store Colette (which closed a year after this retail coup). It quickly found its way to the online platform of e-commerce giant Net-a-Porter. Fashion editors such as Eva Chen and Nina Garcia were endorsing Nancy Gonzalez. The year she was big enough to pair with KAWS, footwear—made in Italy—was added to her already massive bag line. In 2017, nearly two decades after he helped his mother established her business in the U.S., Santiago Gonzalez suddenly passed away.

Collaboration with KAWS in 2016. Photo: Nancy Gonzalez/Facebook

It is not known if Mr Gonzales was aware of or involved in, or condoned his mother’s employment of illegal hides (but he did tell Hong Kong Tatler in 2013 that “if you do things correctly with good intentions to the best of your ability in an original way, you will have a better chance of being successful”). According to the Columbian police, the skins used were from species that were protected or on the brink of extinction. The use and sale of some of these skins in the finished products are against the law, unless there is certification by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) , but this is notoriously hard to obtain. Nancy Gonzalez allegedly did not have such a permit. Instead, she and her co-accused hatched a scheme which had them pay runners to bring the illegal goods through U.S. airports in Miami and New York. In the mean time, she continued with the glamour-tinged business and jet-set lifestyle, seemingly unconcerned by the likely fate her criminal activity would have set her to meet.

According to a federal indictment filed in Miami federal court, she had her merchandise, once they crossed the U.S. border, delivered to her showroom in Manhattan. They would be snapped up or exhibited during New York Fashion Week in September. In 2019, the last year of the period of her illicit operation was being watched, individual couriers—as many as 12—were given four handbags each to fly to the U.S., with return tickets taken care of by Ms Gonzalez, according to investigations by the American Fish and Wildlife Service. On her brand’s website, the bag designer described herself as a “petite and soft-spoken woman”. Yet, in 2011, she chattily told Glossed and Found, in a video interview: “What I love is to laugh. It’s my favourite thing in life. I don’t need anything else”. It might not be so now, as she faces the charges in court and awaits the sentencing.