Kogamina is a young independent label for ladies who love fabric and colors !
There is a song called “Diamonds are a girls best friend”by Marilyn Monroe.
and I believe so are Bags !
I am the one of those girls who loves bags since childhood.
I chose Kiki-Lala(sanrio) Boston bag as my first travelling bag when I was 5 years old.
After entering a primary school, I always carries pochette with me putting handkerchief and tissue paper. It was my morning mission to coordinate them with my clothes. In Japan, we have to carry a leather made backpack called randoseru（wikipedia.org/wiki/Randoseru） during whole primary school period (6 years!). I took care of mine with love-wipe off the rain drop, put wax brush with cloth sometimes etc, so my randoseru was still like a brand new one even on my graduation day.
I also like these super brand bags sometimes, but still I prefer the bags which I can feel love and warmness, and I also like a bit kitch one.
But the most important thing for my bag choice is to be light because I have tight shoulders constantly…
So automatically the concept for kogamina bags became
” Light, Strong, and make you cheerful”
–My Dream—
From 2000 to 2002, I worked as a volunteer in a small village in Bangladesh.
With the village ladies, I struggled to change their life into better condition.
Somehow, we managed to built a small women union and set up a little workshop to receive orders to make their traditional clothes.
In cities, girls can go to work in factories but in villages, they have to stay around their home to take care of family at the same time and also because of their traditional custom. The wage for those ladies who work in factories from morning to night is incredibly low, so you can imagine how it is for the ladies in villages…(factories come to villages to drop their orders), but it is better than nothing, so they really work hard to earn little money.
My dream is to create kogamina bags with those village ladies and to pay them proper wages which correspond to their work. And I know they can make nice products which you can feel love and warmness…
It will be a long way to go, but I want to keep going forward to make it happen!!
