Just as the Latin-inspired name suggests NEO 87100 is all about the new, while the number denotes a postal code, the exact location in southern Italy where the bags are made.

Visiting her uncle’s factory was a formative experience for Ilaria, the brand’s creative director, and was to become the first step in a path that later led her to fashion school in Florence. 

 “When I visited my uncle as a child, I was fascinated to see how bags and leather goods were made,” she says. “There, in front of my eyes was a large open space where different people were focused on a specific part of the bag making process. Whether it was hand stitching or artisans painting the edges of bags, the experience ignited excitement and a passion for the fashion world in me.”

 The idea for NEO87100 came to Ilaria while working in London in luxury retail. Here, she found herself surrounded by bags that were either too tiny or that swamped her small frame. “There was the cute little clutch or the huge office bag, with very little in between.” 

Necessity is often the mother of invention and in the case of NEO87100, not being able to find what she was looking for prompted Ilaria to create her own collection of handbags that are versatile, stylish, and beautiful inside and out.  

With every stage from cutting the leather, hand painting the edges, allowing the leather to dry, stitching, assembling all the parts to finally embossing the brand with the logo, it takes a whole day to assemble a single NEO87100 creation.