{"id":1692,"date":"2025-03-15T05:38:30","date_gmt":"2025-03-15T05:38:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/03\/15\/rebecca-minkoff-celebrates-her-20-year-milestone-and-a-renewed-mab-bag\/"},"modified":"2025-03-15T05:38:31","modified_gmt":"2025-03-15T05:38:31","slug":"rebecca-minkoff-celebrates-her-20-year-milestone-and-a-renewed-mab-bag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2025\/03\/15\/rebecca-minkoff-celebrates-her-20-year-milestone-and-a-renewed-mab-bag\/","title":{"rendered":"Rebecca Minkoff Celebrates Her 20-Year Milestone and a Renewed MAB Bag"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rebecca Minkoff attends Fashion Icons With Fern Mallis: Rebecca Minkoff at 92NY on Feb. 10, 2025 in New York City. Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Between running her namesake brand, spearheading a foundation, co-hosting a podcast, parenting four kids and\u2014until recently\u2014making time for reality TV, Rebecca Minkoff<\/a> still manages to clock out at a reasonable hour and log eight hours of sleep. \u201cSleep for me is a big source of recognizing that I need it to go at the rate I go,\u201d she told Observer<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The 44-year-old fashion designer, who uses a giant paper planner and writes everything down, organizes her daily tasks by theme and urgency, with to-dos sorted into \u201cmust finish,\u201d \u201cnice to have\u201d and the inevitable \u201cpush to next week.\u201d Mondays through Thursdays are reserved for her role as chief creative officer of the Rebecca Minkoff brand. Fridays belong to the Female Founder Collective, which she co-founded with fellow entrepreneur Alison Wyatt<\/a> in 2018 to support women business owners like herself. She makes tangible quarterly plans instead of chasing five-year visions. And instead of doing everything herself, she has learned to delegate with precision.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Recently, Minkoff announced her exit from Bravo\u2019s <\/span>Real Housewives of New York City<\/span><\/i> after a one-season appearance. <\/span>\u201cFamily, friends and brand<\/span><\/a>\u201d are now the focus, she said in an Instagram post in early February.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Rebecca Minkoff brand and the launch of its iconic \u201cMorning After Bag,\u201d or MAB. Among her \u201ctentpole\u201d moments for 2025: the release of her first book, <\/span>Fearless<\/span><\/i>, a collection of candid life and career advice; a four-part podcast series with the Sex and the City<\/em> author Candace Bushnell<\/a>; and the relaunch of the MAB\u2014a<\/span> smaller, more shrunken version<\/span><\/a> of the original version designed to \u201cfit under your arm for the girl going out now 20 years later,\u201d Minkoff said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A success by accident<\/b><\/h3>\n

Today, handbags account for roughly 80 percent of her brand\u2019s total sales, but Minkoff actually started out as an apparel designer. In 2004, when Minkoff was three years into her apparel design career and working as a celebrity stylist on the side to pay her bills, she received a request by her friend, the actress Jenna Elfman<\/a>, to design a handbag for a movie she was working on. Despite having no experience in making handbags, Minkoff jumped at the opportunity anyway.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn those days, it was all about the <\/span>Sex and the City<\/span><\/i> lifestyle: serendipitous meetings on the subway, romantic encounters on the street, getting past the velvet rope to dance the night away\u2014and having a handbag with room for your dancing shoes when you headed off to work the morning after a wild night out,\u201d she wrote in <\/span>Fearless<\/span><\/i>. \u201cAnd just like that, the idea of the Morning After Bag was born.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The first MAB, a chocolate brown canvas with metallic faux crocodile trim and a turquoise zipper made by an industry-famous artisan in the Garment District for $1,600, never made to the big screen but later took off in its own right\u2014thanks to Minkoff carrying it everywhere herself. The bag gained traction through word-of-mouth, got the attention of influential fashion buyers, and eventually catapulted the Rebecca Minkoff brand into the household-name status..\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, as fashion trends evolved, so did the needs of Minkoff\u2019s customers. \u201cNobody had smartphones in 2005,\u201d she noted. \u201cNobody carries an East West wallet anymore. So, we made the bag smaller but big enough to hold a phone.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond functionality, Minkoff said her muse<\/a> has evolved too. \u201cThe girl in 2005 was probably a girl who was looking for love and focused on it. I think the girl today\u2014love is going to be part of her life, but it\u2019s not necessarily the sole focus of her life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Rebecca Minkoff\u2019s first book, Fearless<\/em>, hit bookstores in February. Courtesy Rebecca Minkoff<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Building a lasting brand in a volatile industry<\/b><\/h3>\n

In fashion, surviving 20 years is a feat, especially for a brand like Rebecca Minkoff, which lands in the \u201caccessible luxury\u201d category\u2014a space that\u2019s not quite fast fashion, not quite heritage luxury, and often vulnerable to trends.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe most difficult thing is how fast everything is moving,\u201d the designer said. \u201cYou can have a trend and it\u2019s gone in a couple of months.\u201d Because it takes about nine months to get a new design from concept to shelf, Minkoff\u2019s approach is to hedge. \u201cWhile we are trying to participate in trends, we\u2019re not aligning our entire business to them. For us, it\u2019s always about balancing a few trend-driven items with a core that never goes away.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That \u201ccore\u201d includes the brand\u2019s distinctive hardware\u2014celestial studs, chunky chain links, and the designer\u2019s signature dog leash clips. \u201cI originally was getting those dog clips at Home Depots around the city or wherever I would be traveling. I\u2019d bring an extra suitcase and buy out the Home Depot,\u201d she said. <\/span><\/p>\n

Ultimately, it\u2019s less about the silhouette or the aesthetics and more about the woman who carries it. \u201cWhen you close your eyes, we want you to think about the brand as a little bit casual with a bit of a rock n\u2019 roll edge,\u201d Minkoff said. \u201cAs long as you can close your eyes and think that, then we can be either part of a small-bag trend or a large-bag trend.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Rebecca Minkoff\u2019s customers are primarily Millennial and Gen Z women, the latter of which are rediscovering the appeal of the Y2K fashion that defined their preceding generation. Brand awareness appears to remain strong. The economic side of it, however, is another story.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rebecca Minkoff bags used to be made in China, in the same factory that produced Kate Spade\u2019s. In 2018, new tariffs imposed by the first Trump administration nearly crippled the business, forcing the designer to move her production to Vietnam and Indonesia.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then came the Covid-19 pandemic. Factory capacities were down as much as 90 percent. Bag sales cratered. Unlike fashion giants with a global reach and an expansive product catelogue, Rebecca Minkoff was too small to keep assembly lines busy alone. In 2021, Minkoff decided to sell her company to Sunrise Brands<\/a>, a Los Angeles-based apparel group, in order to stabilize its supply chain. She stayed on as chief creative officer, now with the resources to better navigate black-swan disruptions.<\/span><\/p>\n

In an age of hyper-competition, where trends are driven more by TikTok algorithms than fashion editors, Minkoff\u2019s philosophy hasn\u2019t changed much: consistency, brand identity and a refusal to chase the zeitgeist at the expense of substance. \u201cI think it\u2019s about really honing in on who your woman is, what she stands for, and the lifestyle she\u2019s leading,\u201d she said. <\/span><\/p>\n

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