Designer Lindsay Thomas launched an accessories line to put the emphasis on dramatic flair.
Story by Cara Clark, Photos by Kelli Boyd
“Drama is always in.” That’s how Lindsay Thomas, the artist-seamstress behind Savannah, Georgia-based Garland Bags, sees making a strategic move in life or adding that extra point of panache to a wardrobe. With bangles, belt buckles, and bags, the artistic touches can be subtly dramatic or high-impact animal-print, and the business of creating those is its own reward.
While working full-time in fundraising, managing a demanding toddler, and expecting a baby, Lindsay was looking for flexibility in her work life and decided to start a pillow business in 2014.
“I’ve always been obsessed with textiles and high-end, fabulous fabrics,” Lindsay says. “I wanted to find a way to work from home and be creative.”
With that goal, she began crafting accent pillows, combining those fab textiles with her high-design ideas. As their popularity increased, her craftsmanship skills were recognized by an elite company, which became her primary corporate client.
The pillow business centered on fulfilling that client’s needs with a conservative, specific design, so Lindsay found herself needing to create effervescent styles to brighten women’s looks and lives.
“I had fabric remnants from my fun pillow days, and I was perusing Pinterest one day, looking at how to make handbags in a tutorial about using hot glue and cardboard,” she says. “I used a Scalamandre zebra pattern, and it turned out horribly. But the wheels were turning in my brain, and sometimes I couldn’t fall asleep thinking about how to make them.”
With trial and error, Lindsay mastered a method for making beautiful clutch bags with dramatic fabrics and accent pieces. She found the long-lasting fabrics that worked to create pillows, also translated into bags. But delicate silks, such as vintage Hermes scarves, made their way into some of her designs, too.
“I love works of art and making things,” Lindsay says. “I’m so enamored with fabrics, and scarves were such a fun discovery a few years ago. The business was born from this creative void, and I was just on fire for it. Once I started making clutches, it was all I wanted to do — every spare moment. I can make a clutch out of almost anything. I also love using big, unapologetic gold ornaments. I got this great response from social media, and from there, well …”
She used some vintage pieces discovered at estate sales, on eBay, or in the most surprising places, and in 2018, the clutches joined the party.
“Now, we’re making our own hardware,” she says. “We used a lot of vintage pieces as jumping-off points for our design.”
The gold statement pieces on belts and clutches might be leopards or leaves, bamboo sticks or bees, giraffes, or gilt flowers. Having the resources to make these as accents for the clutches, Lindsay knew it would be an easy translation to adding fixtures on the back to transform them into buckles, a popular item in her line. “I love having statement accessories because I’m not someone who walks into a room and says, ‘I’m here,’” she says. “I think it’s fun to make and sell these statement accessories that can go with understated looks, but you have these moments of zest without having to commit fully with an entire look.”
Lindsay is committed to the cause. She even writes “purse profiles” to accompany the bags, a whimsical look at the person who owns them and what makes them special.
A Scalamandre zebra clutch with a bamboo accent (she perfected the design when she revisited it) speaks to “The New Amy,” with a short story about how this person has transformed her dingy refrigerator into an immaculate holding space for foodstuffs and finally driven those bags of clothing earmarked for Goodwill straight to donation, cleansing her space and her outlook. The profiles are whimsical and pointed, with insight that makes the reader think, “I know someone like that.”
“I love writing, and it was really fun to be able to utilize another skill that had nothing to do with making things,” she says. “I like to sit down and come up with fun stories.”
The purses, which expanded from the original clutch to an accordion clutch and now to pouch bags, are crafted by three seamstresses in Savannah. While Lindsay serves as creative officer and owner, Janna Newland, a friend and former banker who provides the perfect mix of creativity and pragmatism, serves as CEO. Another friend, Emmy Wilcox, has taken on the company’s COO role. The pillow company remains half of the Garland Bags business, exclusively selling to the private company Lindsay connected with early. The creativity of designing the accessories still sets her imagination alight and inspires her 11-year-old daughter, Bree.
