Quute Illumina - A Bag Full of Sunshine

Late night, the party is over, you have found your car and stand outside, digging through your handbag looking for your keys, some gum and that phone number etched on a napkin.  How is it that whatever you are looking for always falls to the deepest corners of your purse?  Then it hits you, they should put lights inside your handbag!  Done and done!  Designer Sade Popoola has taken cutting edge technology, Nigerian inspired fabric, modern designs and her business sense to create the next functional and fashionable handbag to hit the fashion and technology forward in Los Angeles and New York.  The bright answer to your dark handbag questions is the Quute Illuminated Handbag.

Technology in Style
Quute Illuminated Handbags let you no longer rely on the dim light of the parking structure you are in or your cell phone, which you probably can't find either, to see into those dark recesses of your purse.  With patent pending technology, Popoola has designed a line of handbags with lights that turn on only when your bag is open, saving battery power when closed.  Using several different technology companies, Popoola and her innovative technologists have created the one-of-a-kind light that sets Quute apart, using actual lights rather than electro-illuminescent lights.  These lights sip on battery power and will last much longer than that new iPhone you waited in line five hours for.

Styled Ideas
With such bright ideas on the interior, there is also an exterior to match.  All of Popoola's designs use damask, a patterned fabric that has been in use for hundreds of years in countries like India, China and Africa.  Damask has traditional origins in Africa, Popoola's home, as "wedding fabric."  The bride and groom each choose a color and guests arrive in damask fabric shirts and dresses of the color their side of the wedding has chosen.

The West knows damask only as expensive tablecloths and curtains in posh homes, hotels and restaurants.  Popoola chose this fabric because of its bright statement, much like the inside, that will result in a much more fashion forward functional bag than the traditional "light in a bag" designs we have seen before.  Taking a cue from all these different sources of fabric, the handbag design starts with the fabric, not the shape of the bag.  Popoola likes to design around the fabric, rather than put fabric around the design.

Currently available only on high end shelves in the United Kingdom, Sade Popoola is working with manufacturers and distributors in the United States to bring her brightly styled designs over the sea.  Nominated for a British Female Inventor and Innovator Award, Sade Popoola has worldwide interest to take her bright idea everywhere.  Contact Quute Ltd. at www.quuteillumina.co.uk

Published on Jul 17, 2007