Introducing Avery Verse, An Australian Luxury Brand

Settle in and enjoy this wonderful interview about Avery Verse, an Australian luxury brand, founded by husband and wife team Taylor and Christie Cook.  While you’re scrolling, check out the images of their beautiful specially-made leather bags.  They’re quite stunning!

1. How did you come up with the name Avery Verse?

We’re both believers in thoughtful names and like to look at the meanings behind them. Avery means ‘wise’ and Verse evokes imagery of poetry or music, artful and expressive traditions. So wefelt that a wise verse best captured what we’re doing at Avery Verse. Creating luxury handbags with thought for the environment and your fellow man is both wise and aspirational.

2. What is vegetable tanned leather and why is it different?

Vegetable tanning is the process of bathing leather in water full of organic material for up to sixty days. This prepares the leather for manufacture and ensures it is able to become a bag. We chose it because it’s really the most sustainable, or eco-friendly, option on the market. More commonly, luxury brands use chromium, a toxic chemical, to tan their bags because it’s cheaper and quicker,
but it’s far more devastating to the environment and the tanners.  Alongside of this, in order to vegetable tan leather, you have to use the best quality of leather and as a luxury brand we thoroughly desire to provide a high quality product and experience. So, our thought for others, the customer and building a company all came together brilliantly.

3. What’s it like working with your spouse?

Great! We’re very complimentary to each other in terms of strengths and weaknesses, so by working together we’re able to create a business far superior to what would exist if we were just on our own. Besides that, we enjoy each other’s company so it just seemed obvious to be together as often as we could.

4. What is luxury fashion with a conscience?

This is the idea that you can have great quality clothes, jewellery and, of course, handbags without giving up on altruism and care for society. The stereotype is that owning beautiful things means you’re inconsiderate and we flat out disagree.You can have elegance and style and still support those less fortunate, and one way for us to achieve this was to donate money from every sale to charities.  We’re also members of Femeconomy, which is a movement designed to break any final glass ceilings that keep women from being equally represented on boards of directors or as owners of their own business.

5. What style advice would you give for women looking to buy a luxury handbag?

We’re big believers in style and function. So we advocate buying luxury bags you could take to the office and the bar after work. Life’s short, so you may as well be able to enjoy some finer things in your everyday, not just on special occasions.

6. Who is the Avery Verse woman?

She’s empowered. This can express itself in many different ways, whether she learns a second language because she’s passionate about growing her skill set, is a leader of a multi-national corporation, or is respected in her family as a stay at home mom. Regardless of what the circumstances might look like, the Avery Verse woman knows she has value.

7. What are some of your successes and challenges?

We’re an emerging brand in a tough industry so a big challenge for us is to be desired over a more established name. The greatest success we’ve seen is the passionate support from those who own an Avery Verse bag. We’re creating something different in luxury fashion, without sacrificing the luxury or the fashion, and a lot of women find what we’re doing refreshing, which is a great win for us.

8. What inspires you to do the work you do?

Our family is the main inspiration. We want to create a better future for the next generation and role model how you can choose to live your life so that it is fulfilling and meaningful.

9. What’s your vision for your business?

We desire to grow Avery Verse into a global brand that can guide the industry, in a small or big way, towards adopting a more altruistic business model that can be sustainable for the environment and a blessing to those in need.

10. What is your favourite activity to relax and unwind?

We love watching comedy of all kinds and laughing.