Gigi Hadid is the epitome of classic American beauty, while also having a dynamic personality, an eclectic style and a very healthy body image.

The Grace Atelier team was delighted to have her carry the classic Babette Boheme handbag in white. One of her public appearances with her Grace Atelier handbag was featured in numerous magazines and online media such as Vogue India, WhoWhatWear, Harper’s Bazaar US and Vogue US.

Grace was born in Greece to a family of Greek, Italian and Egyptian roots. Her grandmother and mother, fashion icons of their time, who lived in Alexandria of Egypt, designed their own dresses and accessories and had them made to perfection by the best craftsmen in town.

Her mother, herself a painter, art collector and antique lover, fell in love with her father, a pioneer entrepreneur with strong anthropocentric principles. All the above have had a strong impact on her work, making Grace Atelier a combination of her family culture and her personal vision.

After studying Industrial Engineering, Grace decided to move to London where she studied fashion design at London College of Fashion. Around 2004, while exploring the fashion scene in London as a young student, Grace came up with Grace Atelier de Luxe, a brand-name inspired by her own nickname. She started designing dresses, bridal gowns, jewellery, shoes and handbags for an exclusive clientelle, who were able to buy her creations only through Grace’s showroom, named Grace Atelier. In 2013, the idea of shifting her energy from custom-made creations to a line of ready-to-wear products was crystallized, and her very first leather handbag collection was born.

Grace’s first collection was among the winners of VOGUE ITALIA’S Vogue Talents contest in 2014, giving the brand an opportunity to start exporting its creations and build a strong international image.

Grace is passionately diving her time and devotion between Grace Atelier, her family and her friends.

No other sense brings up emotions of the past as intensely and accurately as smell. Through a familiar scent we can experince time-travel in a very profound way. 

Grace pays great attention to scents; this bottle, once belonging to her father, is her most valuable possesion. All Grace Atelier boxes are perfumed with a touch of classic vanilla, her own staple fragrance, while the scents used in our candles are always especially developed under the supervision of the Grace Atelier team.

Grace has always been fascinated by the clean, simple lines of classic architecture, while the Art Deco style has inspired her intensely and has emboldened her love for brass-gold hues and for bold materials such as marble and precious stones.

Lately, a playful-childish even-graphic vibe has been added into the mix of Grace’s favorite themes. Along with the designing team, she draws the house’s classic prints, which respectively swing between graphic, classic and geometric.

In order to freely design for different projects, the  Grace Atelier team looks at every collection as a new, fresh and autonomous challenge. A collection may consist of ready-to-wear, handbags, accaeeories and candles and/or homeware.

For Grace Atelier collections, the designing team uses materials and styles that make the products timeless. Good quality durable leather, ensures that our handbags and small leather goods become pieces that can be inherited from a generation to the next one. Nickel-free, lead-free metal components are handpicked, in order to ensure a lifetime of durability and low environmental impact. Classic (not necessarily plain though) prints and silhouettes are chosen for all of our collections, so that our creations can be relevant in the future, making the brand sustainable in an additional way; that of re-usability and of minimum waste.

Grace Atelier is in a constant endeavor to find balance between quality, convenience and timelessness when designing her collections. Having already ensured a slow-pace and labour-intense production, where everyone involved is paid above the industry standards, she is now exploring sustainability in many different directions: fabrics that  are low-maintenance, packaging that can be re-purposed and made-to-order production are some of them.

For Grace Atelier’s Athens Flagship store, Grace P.K. and Kelly Tsirimonakis, the interior designer who worked with her closely, have used a combination of simple but bold materials in order to create an unexpected and iconic look, that reflects the brands’ aesthetic. Oval mirrors (a shape often used on our handbag designs), marble, mosaic, brass and lacquered wood are some of Grace’s preferred materials which, alongside classic fabrics like velvet and wool, found their way into the first Grace Atelier shop.

Grace Atelier is the home of iconic, hand-made and limited edition luxury essentials.

HANDBAGS

Every handbag of our Classic collection is produced in limited editions of 50 to 300 numbered pieces globally, so that product exclusivity is ensured and our clients are proud owners of truly rare items.

Grace Atelier handbags come with a temporary Certificate of Authenticity, which includes each product’s specific Edition, Run and unique code. Customers are welcomed to apply online for a personalised Certificate of Authenticity, which additionally includes the owner’s name and all the details of the article.

Each edition of our Classic handbag collection features a series of variations, such as placement, type or size of the Grace Atelier logo, leather type and/or leather color.

Grace Atelier also produces smaller editions or custom-made products, branded as special or bespoke editions respectively. These editions are identified by their name followed by their individual number of copies, for example: “Plage Royale” Special Edition / 25.

READY-TO-WEAR

All ready-to-wear items fall in either one of these categories:

-Limited edition (they last for as long as produced items are available)

-Classic (carry-overs)

-One-of-a-kind (unique creations, either bespoke or special designs of the house that have been only produced once)

PERSONALISATION TAGS: All ready-to-wear and handbag editions from 2019 onwards have a special fabric tag attached on the products, where customers may hand-write their name and place/date of purchase. This way every Grace Atelier creation is transformed to a very personal item, with special sentimental value.

Grace Atelier hosts private dinner parties, in celebration of every new fashion season and occasionally in order to unveil a special edition or support a cause. Those exclusive events are kept under the radar and are not exposed to social media, in order for guests to unwind and focus on having a great time, right then and there.

Grace P.K. hosts some of them herself; she loves creating themed dinners which are inspired by the projects she is currently working on or by the products Grace Atelier is launching at the time of the event.

Everybody really enjoys them, but Grace feels that some really important guests are missing. If she had to plan her ideal dinner party, she would be thrilled if she could host one where Coco Chanel, John Lennon, Ernest Hemingway and Bill Gates would attend! Can you imagine?

The Grace Atelier showroom is home to our world. Our current collections, upcoming projects and history are all showcased here.

Our clients can see a display of our initial prototypes and sketches, our very first leather braided panels, signature Grace Atelier dresses and all the articles and publications were Grace Atelier has been featured in, as well as look through sample materials, drawings and colorbooks.

Decorated as a Paris meets old Hollywood house, our showroom completely reflects the Grace Atelier aesthetic. Most of our photoshooting sessions are hosted in our offices or at the products’ display area, where furniture and decorative objects-mostly designed by Grace-are used as props.

Marble, brass, gold and a lot of black and white elements are dominant in the space, while relaxing music, exotic plants and fresh flowers create a positive atmosphere were creativity is nurtured and encouraged.

For Grace P.K. black is the ultimate color. However, she is very passionate about all colors-but not just any tone of colors. She is very particular about which specific shade she chooses to use in her projects.

This is a passion that was passed on to her from her mother and grandmother. Grace also liaises colors with textures: cotton poplin looks best in pure white, silk crepe must always be a crisp off-white, while linen is at its best as an off-white made of 90% white and 10% black.

Grace spends a lot of time thinking about colors and she thoroughly researches the perfect hues for her designs. Grace Atelier works closely with a small team of professionals in order to develop bespoke hues for the leather and hardware that are used in all of the Grace Atelier collections.

Even classic elements such us our gold-tone metal compartments are dyed with a specially produced shade of gold, that is now informally known as Grace gold. For each yearly edition, our classic collection colors are also a result of bespokely dyed leather, referred to as year/color (for example “2018/babyblue”). 

As the creative director and head designer of Grace Atelier, Grace P.K. begins each project with taking some time off to travel, reflect and research.

When it comes to designing our signature digital prints, as soon as the mood of the new project is crystallized, the procedure of bringing new designs in to life begins. Every new print takes about 100 hours to be finalized by the Grace Atelier designers’ team; after reviewing the sample prints, Grace fine tunes the end result and the new print takes its place in the long collection of Grace Atelier classic designs. Our prints are used again and again without seasonality. The team is free to use any print and any pattern at any given moment, creating new, hybrid or re-done products.

As far as a new handbag or ready-to-wear silhouette is concerned, Grace herself creates the draft prototypes using paper. This is the most critical stage of her work; the shape, proportions and details must reflect her original idea! Next comes the selection of the material and the exact production technique to be implemented.

During the construction phase, Grace gives detailed instructions to her team of designers and trusted craftesmen and then leaves them to create on their own. She comes back to the production space when the original prototypes are ready! She feels as if she has put together a magic potion and she is allowing its ingredients to blend together until magic happens. Minor adjustments and fine tuning are sometimes required before the new style finally becomes part of the world of Grace Atelier.

The use of traditional manufacturing techniques is something that Grace Atelier passionately believes in and supports. All Grace Atelier products are either hand-cut, hand-weaved and/or manually constructed by skillful artisans, ensuring that every piece is a one-of-a-kind item.

The Grace Atelier iconic hand-weaved panels, inspired by ancient Egyptian baskets, are the signature feature of our permanent collection, named Grace Atelier de Luxe.

The Babette, our classic bucket bag launched in 2013, was the first handbag to feature our signature braiding technique. Ever since, we handcraft and hand-braid our Grace Atelier de Luxe handbags with minimum use of tools and machinery.

The braiding of an original Grace Atelier handbag is never positioned in the exact center of a panel, it is always slightly off-center and unnoticeably differently placed on every single panel, something that would be impossible to achieve with machine-based production. The charm of Grace Atelier does not only lie in its architectural shapes and specially developed hues, but also in this valuable detail.

All Grace Atelier creations are accompanied by a personalised guarantee note that ensures that our clients are the possessors of an original Grace Atelier creation. The exact edition, place of purchase and name of the owner are stated, among other information, on the guarantee card.