Instead, more of us are turning towards more timeless, long-lasting pieces – and are willing to pay for quality. Entrepreneur Jackie Cawthra, (pictured right) saw this growing consumer dissatisfaction coming, and went on a mission to make something more enduring out of fashion.

While working as a lawyer back in 2004, she decided to set up her own luxury lifestyle company specialising in accessories with a personal touch, made the slow way with painstaking attention to detail. The result was luggage label Belen Echandia, which has received worldwide acclaim and become a thriving internet business.

Care and attention to details are key to Belen Echandia’s success, explains Cawthra, who told us that ‘nothing that we do at BE is quick’. Development of a new product can take up to six months, from the initial sketch stages through a lot of research, selection of materials, testing and tweaking. This is quite a long time compared with many labels, which bring out new trend-led collections every few weeks. While Belen Echandia’s bags are certainly stylish and fashion forward, there’s a strong emphasis on workmanship, uniqueness and ease of use: “We approach design as a customer and we know how much easier life is when you can find your keys and your mobile phone and have a lot of pockets”, says Cawthra.

Additionally, All Belen Echandia bags are produced in tiny quantities of around 10-20 pieces each, so owners are unlikely to see their bag on anyone else’s arm. Compare this with 200 pieces, which is considered a small quantity by most manufacturers. Each bag is cut by hand and very carefully selected, ensuring a quality that is impossible to achieve through mass-production. Cawthra notes ‘It’s very difficult to maintain the same quality level on a piece produced thousands of times and even if the quality is maintained, somehow mass produced items don’t have the same feel about them’.

The setup at Belen Echandia is unusual, in part due to the scarcity of producers willing to do things the old-fashioned way. “There are plenty of artisans out there with the skills required to make them”, explains Cawthra, whose bags are made by hand in Italy. “However they have been threatened by the trend towards producing in the far East and many of them have closed their workshop.”

“Many companies have tried to keep a small amount of production in Italy and take the main part elsewhere, but this will never work because the Italian producer can then barely survive”, said Cawthra. “It doesn’t help that the law in Italy says that you are allowed to write “Made in Italy” so long as you at least apply a minor part of the production, like adding a button, in Italy. Many companies use this loophole.”