by Dimitri C. Michalakis

Livanos is certainly unique and certainly an individual. An attorney and manager of her father’s real estate firm (Livanos Real Estate Investments), she also tapped into her creative side with handbags.
““I’ve always just loved bags,” she says. “I feel that you can wear jeans and a tee shirt and if you have a nice bag it makes your whole outfit. I don’t think we should spend that much on clothes. But a bag is something you can have for years. That’s why my big thing is the quality of the bags--so they can last and even become an heirloom.”

None of her bags-- “classic with a twist,” she calls them--” are exactly alike, by design. “My big thing is to be unique and different and for no one else to be holding the same bag as you,” she says. “Why would you want to look like everyone else? That’s my motto basically in everything, too.”

So a natural progression for her line was to get into exotic skins (after working with leather and selling in outlets like Bloomingdale’s) and to market each bag to private clients and through selected boutiques.

“I prefer having private clients,” she says. “That way I can keep prices down and make more unique individual pieces. A lot of clients are friends, or friends of friends--people who I like and trust--and I don’t have to be scared that someone will take the design and sell it or deal with a store markup that can make the bag very expensive.”
At a time when an Olsen twins “original” bag can sell for $22,000, a handmade Livanou crocodile clutch can retail for $600 and a snakeskin for $400, which, for a bag with vintage silver pieces, can be “very reasonable.”

“I shouldn’t say that,” she admits. “What’s reasonable for somebody else might be really expensive.” But she makes her bags affordable for the quality they offer (because she selects the skins herself in Africa) and she eschews the flashy marketing.

“Normally, you have to give them for free to celebrities and you hope they hold it and somebody takes a picture and it gets all over the tabloids. But these are vintage pieces-- and why should I waste them on people who have thousands of pieces? I don’t care if they’re holding them.”

Her fiancée does business in Africa (they’re getting married in February) and she does her own charity work there and selects the skins. She then brings them to the fabled couple in Athens who actually make the bags and who she still respectfully calls “Kyrio and Kyria Zervos.”

“This goes back to my trying to help Greece,” she says. “And because I heard of this great and wonderful couple with many years in the business, who were very nice, and I loved the work they were doing, with a lot of personal attention. In the fashion business, coming at it as an attorney, there is so much backstabbing, but the Zervos’ showed me their work, gave me their input, and always showed me the whole process. Plus, it’s practical because I have a lot of clients in Greece.”

And a variety of other countries, as well, including France, Germany, England, Lebanon, China, and the United States, including New York, Chicago, California, Las Vegas, Texas, and New Jersey. Now the bags are being featured on Fab online and at Shoebox boutiques.

And the Livanou line is expanding into vintage jewelry, including crosses, based on designs which Livanos picked up from her travels around the world.

“I bought them because I like them so obviously I don’t want to give them away or sell them,” she says. “So what do I do? I’m talking to a jewelry company now and I found some manufacturers here, and even though I would like to have these pieces be one of a kind, it’s worth making more of them so more people can have the look of a piece based on a vintage idea.”

And in the same spirit that makes her a maverick in the fashion world she is using fashion to do charity work in Africa and also here and Greece.

“I learned when I helped my friends in fashion with their legal work how much excess there is in the fashion industry,” she says. “I was like--where is all this clothing going? It was taking it home, giving it to friends. Some companies even threw it out so it didn’t go on sale, and I thought this was really a shame. So I started something called Fashion from Friends, which collected surplus clothes from friends that I had in the industry and donated it, say to St. Basil’s Academy. I went up there three times and brought new clothing. And who doesn’t want a used designer dress? Every young woman wants to look nice.”

Besides switching the manufacture of her bags to Greece, she started a charity called Helping Hellas (helpinghellas.org), which aims to provide communities in Greece hard-hit by the economic crisis with supplies to meet their basic needs from sponsors in the United States. She’s working with the respected Desmos Foundation of Athens to identify those most in need and get the supplies out to them.

“It started with the bags, with samples, or inventory the stores didn’t end up buying and then it snowballed,” she says. “I thought there might be surplus with other things, and more dire needs, so I connected companies that donated pens and school supplies, and that’s how Helping Hellas started.”

For her native island of Chios (her parents Vasili and Argyro come from Elata on the island), which was decimated by arson fires this past summer, she is working with Chios Nature to raise both money “and awareness that there’s more than replacing the mastiha trees that were lost. There is the soil erosion when it starts raining and the volunteers who fought these fires and what do they need if it happens again? We want to raise money so they have more supplies, so they have a truck to get to the fire. We have to think about how these fires might happen again and how to prevent them. We are trying to get people excited about giving money to a trust—and that’s the hard part. It’s getting the people educated. But I’m sure Greek Americans would be 100% behind it if they were informed about what’s needed and how it can be properly used. Like the bags, everything is marketing.”

She says she does the charity for “purely selfish reasons—it makes me feel good.” And while she doesn’t know where her marriage or career will take her, “I love New York, and I love Chios, and I love fashion and clothes, but those are not the most important things in life. They told me you have to market your line and tweet and you have to do this and that, and I’m like, I can’t talk about bags. That would drive me crazy. There’s so much going on in the world.’

‘That said--” she laughs “--you’re talking to somebody who doesn’t want to wear the same thing twice. I know in the grand scheme of things making bags is a frivolous luxury, but I love it and I’m proud when I hold my own in the industry and when people come up to me and tell me I love your bags.”