Longevity / āim bags and accessories bear a promise: they are here to stay. The timeless, sophisticated design allows each one to complete a woman's style over seasonality, years, whatever life brings. Each model ages with grace and wins over the unsustainable race of the fashion system.
Uniqueness / Every piece is unique, and not just because it's cool to be so. It's unique because it is made, from the beginning, by the expert hands of craftsmen working in small, family-led leather factories, utilising only the finest materials that result from overproduction.
Responsibility / We do not want to sell more. We want to sell a few, slow-paced, unique pieces that do not impact our planet. Reuse, recycle and end-of-life management: our responsibility is embedded in our initial design proposition. And it will always be.
When a project tells a story and leads to change, it’s meant to rouse the spirits and stay in time.
This is what the designer Anna Maria Mongillo has done when founding her own label āim, started from an intuition that has literally gave a new life to the classic idea of bag, that now becomes a unique accessory made to stay.
THE STORY
Serendipity, harmony, aesthetic and sustainability are the forces that got aligned, altogether, to create something that just had to happen: āim.
The founder, Anna Maria Mongillo, had the intuition and the determination to bring these unique pieces to life.
To be precise, to get them to a new life.
It all started a couple of years ago when Anna Maria took a stroll in one of Naples' flea market. One of those magical places where she, being an internationally renowned accessories designer, had always picked many, great and little, precious inspiration.
THE HANDLE, OUR SIGNATURE
The initial sparkle came from a handle. A vintage bag handle, surfacing from hundreds of old, different pieces. The handle spoke to her, telling a story of balance and perfection and one of strength and determination.
“It was all there. I only had to let the story unfold”
Declined in all of our models, the signature handle allows women to grasp the bag the same way they are now grasping their life: with elegance and without bending to the pressure of the day.
THE SERENDIPITY APPROACH
Being found, rather than planned, is the unexpected ingredient that was infused into Anna Maria's new, first solo design project. After many years working for global brands and designing bags, shoes and accessories following the client's market signature, she found herself following a blissful lead of creative solitude. Everything was finally flowing altogether, and serendipity led to the first āim bag, followed by the first collection.
A visit to one of the local leather processing factories she usually collaborates with, drove then to the second encounter: that with patches of beautiful, precious, leftover leather that resulted from overproduction that sat there, abandoned.
"Like the handle, also the material found me", she says. The concept of reuse and waste avoidance came into the project almost by chance.
“Sustainability found me, and it was love at first sight”
Design is a process of pure creativity that fires upon a sudden, unexpected inspiration. Anna Maria was used to the process already. Still, the inspiration's intensity led to the immediate creation of her first, unique piece: Olivia.
It was then, when the alignment happened: āim was born.