The company have only been in existence for around twelve years and yet in that short space of time they have become the best selling handbag brand in the U.K. If you consider that more established and more “glamourous” brands such as Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Chanel have all been put into the shade by Radley then it really puts the company’s stellar success into some kind of perspective.

It begs the question, how does a handbag brand that was only created twelve years ago become more popular than the luxury giants of Chanel et al many of which have been global luxury brands for the best part of 60 + years.

A simple answer to that question would be that Radley create handbags that are affordable. They can create a bag using the finest leather available and produce a handbag that is just as good in terms of quality as anything that Gucci or Chanel might be able to produce.

The difference is Radley price their products to make them affordable and accessible to more people whilst the other luxury handbag makers have kind of painted themselves into a corner as they cannot produce a bag that sells for "only" £ 125 as it dilutes their luxury brand. You will also find that there is almost a collector's level of interest in Radley and you will find many such items for sale on our pages from people who have spent years collecting these handbags

So how did Radley start ?

In the 1990’s a young Australian architect, by the name of Lowell Harder was travelling through England. Whilst on her travels she met and eventually married a Dane a nd the couple later went on to have three children. English architecture did nothing to inspire Lowell Harder and she soon started to think of ways to channel her creative energy aside from looking after her young family.

The spark of inspiration came when her bohemian cousin returned from a recent trip to India with some vegetable tan leather bags and Lowell Harder was immediately struck by the unique designs. She contacted the person in India who made the bags and shortly after she was having her own designed bags manufactured in India.

In the early days her bags were nothing too elaborate and tended to be rather casual working bags and ethnic, leather handbags. Mrs Harder started to sell her bags from a market stall at Camden market just two days a week. The brand name she used at the time was “Hidedesign”. Not only were the bags popular with shoppers but with other retailers who started approaching Lowell Harder enquiring if they could order bags from her to resell in their stores.

Word was starting to spread and one day John Lewis contacted her to discuss stocking her bags. A subsequent meeting with one of the buyers led to a firm offer from the retail giant for Lowell Harder to manufacture and supply John Lewis with her own bags. However, the sheer scale of the orders meant that Lowell Harder couldn’t financially support the order. Thankfully, she was able to receive backing from Tula, the famous handbag producer, and agreed to design bags for them under the brand name of “Radley”.

Her designs were a commercial success and her confidence began to grow. Lowell Harder’s love of dogs led to the inclusion a West Highland terrier dog on some of her designs and when these bags flew off the shelves she was encouraged to incorporate the dog into every design. Today the terrier dog is now the Radley logo and appears on all Radley bags.

Radley launch a new collection every season and perhaps the most eagerly anticipated item from their collection is the Radley signature bag, also known as the Radley picture bag. The signature bag features a colourful scene consisting of appliquéd leather featuring the famous Radley terrier dog in a variety of scenes which reflects the season the handbag is launched. For example, one of the older signature bags for Spring/Summer was titled “Beside the Seaside” and featured Radley the dog on a beach flying a kite. The colours used in this design were bright pastel colours such as sand and aqua. Not every Radley picture bag design has such a close reference to the season it was launched as the picture bag for Autumn/Winter 2009 featured Radley the dog in a jungle scene !