Beautiful, lean, and sweet, meet the head designer Michelle Chang behind the popular handbag brand Tusk. Trained and educated at the reputable Fashion Design School in Taipei. Michelle came to New York in June 1998 and attended the Parsons School of Design and graduated in 2000.
Michelle worked for a couple of international design houses; DKNY, Ann Taylor/Loft, Ellen Tracy, Liz Claiborne, Isaac Mizrahi and Judith Leiber. With those corporate experiences, she became a well-rounded creative person with a strong business sense.
In 2009, Michelle joined the Tusk team as their Head Designer. Tusk is her first independent design position. When designing Tusk handbag, Michelle tries to keep in mind the heritage of Tusk and uses a lot of Indian inspiration with a modern American twist. She’s also inspired by jewelry, which is apparent in the hardware. She attends trade shows to see trends and makes frequent visits to India. This season’s inspiration was a more rugged urban look. She really wanted to let the customers see the natural grain of the leather, so there’s a lot of beautiful texture in her work. Next season, Michelle would like to use more Indian inspired fabrics. The talented Michelle also is planning to develop her own jewelry line!
(Alice Chin, Tusk designer Michelle Chang, and Diana)
For more information about Tusk, please visit www.tusk.com
Special thanks to AsianInNY’s amazing reporter Alice Chin!