Ayla Bag by Liam Huff is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2025 A' Design Award in Fashion and Travel Accessories Design Competition Category.
IronAccessory· 2025
Ayla Bag
by Liam Huff
Client: Rochester Institute of Technology
A' Design Award Winner in Accessory Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #167955The Design
About Ayla Bag
Ayla is a modular leather tote bag designed to last through multiple product life cycles. The bag is built from replaceable leather panels held together by detachable brass hinges, so no stitching is required. Each panel is placed between an outer hinge and an inner plate, then secured with pins and screws. A damaged panel can be replaced without discarding the whole bag. Predetermined patterns allow a salvaged panel to be remade into a smaller clutch. Full disassembly supports repair and reuse at the end of life.
The Recognition
About the A' Design Award
Ayla Bag is an Iron A' Design Award winner, a prestigious recognition granted to good designs that meet the professional and industrial requirements expected from well-designed creations. Iron winners demonstrate great skill, high specialization, expert understanding, and creative capacity of their creators. Ayla Bag is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished creation that is practical and innovative. This Iron A' Design Award-winning design integrates industry best practices and has competent technical characteristics linked with know-how and talent. Ayla Bag is respected for its thoroughness and is designed to provide quality of life improvements that help make the world a better place.
Where to Get It
Sustainable Fashion Accessory Design Services
We create innovative leather goods and accessories that merge sustainability with exceptional design. Our expertise in modular systems and transformable products ensures your brand stands out while reducing environmental impact. Winner of the A' Design Award, we bring fresh perspectives to every project.
Inquire NowBehind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- Modular and transformable leather panels along with detachable hinges allow Ayla to last multiple product life cycles. The detachable hinge facilitates ease of repair when the product gets damaged. Simply undo the hinge and replace the damaged leather panel, eliminating the need to throw away the entire product. The ability to fully disassemble the product allows for an environmentally friendly end-of-life with the ability to either repair or transform old leather panels into new products.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- 460 mm x 100 mm x 330 mm
- Tags
- Bag, Leather, Sustainable, Hardware, Interchangeable, Replaceable, Tote, Modular Panels, Transformable
- Production Technology
- Experimenting with multiple 3D printed components, I focused on exploring ways to attach leather panels without the use of stitching. I landed on a pin system. Leather panels are sandwiched between an outer hinge and an inner plate. The panels are secured atop the pins and then anchored with a series of screws. With these hinges, everything from the handle, to the main body, to the interior can be replaced. Final hinges were made of polished brass to ensure longevity with extended ware.
- Design Challenge
- The hardest part of this project was finding the perfect intersection of functionality/sustainability and desired look. I determined through my research that my target audience wanted a product that had sustainable attributes but looked no different from a traditional bag. I could achieve the desired function but not in an aesthetic that was appealing to my audience. Through many rounds of prototypes and interviews, I came to a final mechanism that satisfied both ends.
- Research
- I started with database research to determine opportunities to reduce waste. I interviewed 4 professionals in the fashion accessories industry. I used these two methods to inform my hinge mechanism. For product look and feel, I used a survey to determine bag silhouette, mood boards to determine detail and target audience, triading to determine desired look, narrative scenarios to determine how the bag would be used, and user interviews to ultimately hone in on a final design direction.
- Inspiration
- Leather is one of the most polluting sectors within fashion. Most leather products contribute to the idea of take-make-waste. Reducing environmental impact is not as simple as switching to a leather alternative. Almost all alternatives are polymer based and cannot match traditional leather's longevity. If farmed regeneratively, used as meat industry byproduct, and, if able to be used multiple times, leather can be sustainable. Ayla explores how we can use leather to its maximum potential.
- Project Duration
- Started in August of 2023 at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York, USA. and finished in May of 2024 in Rochester, New York, USA.
- Operation Flow
- The detachable nature of the metal hinge allows for components within the product to be interchanged when damage occurs. If one side of the product gets damaged, simply replace that panel, not the entire item; this reduces wastage. Additionally, the main leather panels were designed to be turned into a different, smaller product if only one panel can be salvaged. Predetermined patterns ensure that one panel can be turned into a smaller clutch, further reducing the waste of the item.
- Image Credits
- Image #1 : Photographer Elizabeth Lemark, AYLA_1_3600.jpg, 2024.
Image #2 : Photographer Chelsea Cohen, AYLA_MAIN_1800.jpg, 2024.
Image #3 : Photographer Chelsea Cohen, AYLA_2.jpg, 2024.
Image #4 : Photographer Elizabeth Lemark, AYLA_3.jpg, 2024.
Image #5 : Photographer, Sneha Yalgi, AYLA_5.jpg, 2024
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