A shimmery silver bucket bag, a slouchy metallic tote and a statement clutch made of beads like tiny disco balls. The debut line of evening bags from Le Sept, a new accessories label out of Sydney, has a frisky, roguish glamour.
Creative director Alex Antoniou launched the six-piece line in January. A cinephile and self-confessed vintage-fashion diehard, Antoniou’s first collection merges a penchant for storytelling with ’90s nostalgia.
Antoniou has long imagined the life of her vintage clothes before they belonged to her, and gave each Le Sept silhouette a distinct cinematic muse – one of six “unruly heroines”, she says.
There’s Marla, a slender purse made of bronze-coloured acrylic beads, designed with Fight Club femme fatale Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter) in mind. Elvira is slightly bigger – a classic flap silhouette in silver, named for Elvira Hancock, the alluring mob wife of Tony Montana in Scarface, played by Michelle Pfeiffer.
Ginger is the largest bag in the collection, a ritzy hobo-style tote inspired by Ginger McKenna (Sharon Stone) in Martin Scorsese’s Casino and “big enough to hold a haul of poker chips”.
The bags are made of 100 per cent recycled acrylic beads in limited runs in Thailand. Antoniou works directly with a collective of women that hand-makes each bag, and manufactures the faceted beads, in Bangkok.
The Lula Pace, a pouch-like bucket bag inspired by the heroine of David Lynch’s Wild at Heart (Lulu Pace Fortune, played by Laura Dern), is one of the roomier silhouettes. “She’s robbing a house,” Antoniou reminds us, “there needs to be room in her bag for the trinkets she finds!”
“I focus a lot on night-time activity – these women break out and are in their mysterious worlds at night,” Antoniou says of her muses. “Night-time is always a bit more sexy. But the bags work just as well during the day.” The Elvira looks great with a white tee and jeans, she suggests.
“Because I come from an advertising background, the marketing of [the brand] is in many ways the more exciting part,” she says. “In this Instagram-influencer world, everything, to me, feels quite vanilla in fashion marketing – especially in Australia. It was exciting to create stories that you wouldn’t expect.”
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This story is part of Broadsheet’s May 2025 Fashion issue, proudly sponsored by Mini, which lays down the new rules for Australian style in 2025.
