A society fixture in Hong Kong steps out on her own with a new handbag line.

Fiona Kotur looks every bit the Park Avenue princess – all patrician cool with her alabaster skin, flaxen coiffure and rangy, equestrian build. But this transplanted New York social, whose CV boasts private-school creds, a moneyed bloodline and posh friends, is anything but. For starters, Kotur spends little time these days in her sprawling Manhattan apartment, having relocated to the sloping hills of Hong Kong. And while she’s made a comfortable niche for herself in that cosmopolitan Asian society and become a fixture on the charity circuit, she is not the sort you’ll find angling for an exclusive invitation or vacationing seven months of the year. Instead, she typically opts for the understated, even when it comes to the designs for her nascent accessories line, aptly named Kotur.
“I’m kind of a practical person,” says Kotur during a visit to New York this summer. “It’s nice to have a handbag that is aesthetically beautiful, but is has to be functional too.” To that end, her bags range from roomy, woven hemp totes with Chinese hardware closures for day to metallic python petit box clutches for evening. Indeed, her love of design harks back to her rather privileged upbringing. When she wasn’t running around her family’s country estate in Connecticut making mud pies and chasing frogs with her sister, Alexandra, she was being dragged to exhibitions at Sotheby’s and the Metropolitan Museum of Art by her interior-designer mother, Sheila Camera Kotur. “We grew up in a very aesthetic environment, and that helped shape our appreciation for things,” explains Kotur.
The willowy blond promptly followed in her London-bred, designing mum’s footsteps. The elder Kotur worked at Dior, designed dresses for the royal family and even created Olympic Games uniforms for England in the Sixties before turning to interior design. She was also, it should be noted, prone to gardening clad in her Pucci. Fiona, for her part, attended Chapin, graduated from Wellesley, enrolled at Parsons in design and, in the early Nineties, began working as a stylist at Ralph Lauren. There she met some of the women who would become her bosom friends – Tory Burch, Jennifer Creel, Gigi Mortimer – while becoming well versed in the Lauren work credo. “Ralph really helped me understand quality and workmanship,” she says. “He was uncompromising when it came to that.”
Despite her access to and enjoyment of some of the more obvious trappings of social acceptance and wealth, Kotur’s penchant for the unconventional could not be quelled. Instead of continuing to work in the luxury arena, she went to the Gap to help the company launch Old Navy. “That was before you could find anything that was well designed that wasn’t a designer label,” she contends.
Several years later, in 2002, however, after Kotur married and had two sons, she made a life-changing move to Hong Kong, courtesy of her investment banker husband, Todd Marin. Once there, she slipped easily into high society, joining committees, attending black-ties, amassing a gaggle of rich and glamorous Chinese socialite friends, known as Tai Tais, an snagging the moniker of Peak Princess, as the expat socials are called, although she is loath to hear herself described as such. But then, flitting off to glittering fetes in Lanvin or Chanel, or jetting off on medical missions for her pet charity Operation Smile in, say, Xi’an, still weren’t enough to sate Kotur’s nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic.
In 2003 she helped Tory Burch start her eponymous line. “Fiona introduced us to our partners over in China and helped us set up an infrastructure as well as produce the first couple of collections,” says Burch of her close friend. (They are godmothers to each other’s children.) “She was really instrumental in getting it off the ground.”
Kotur also started a consulting company working with other American retailers, like Scoop’s Stefani Greenfield, to source materials in China. “She’s done a ton of stuff for our private label,” says Greenfield. “You give her an idea, and she’ll run with it tenfold. Some people don’t have the ability to go from conception to execution, but Fiona can go from vision to reality better than anyone I have worked with in my career.”
Now Kotur is channeling the relationships she’s built with factories and manufacturers in Hong Kong into building her own accessories company. “After Tory was well on her way, I decided to start my own business,” says Kotur. “But I was waiting for the right moment and the right idea.” That came when the owner of one of her favorite silk mills closed shop, almost overnight, leaving myriad bolts of vintage brocades to languish in the dust. Horrified, Kotur bought his entire inventory.
Last year, with those reams of fabric, she began making her signature evening clutches, which Greenfield bought for Scoop. She has since expanded her offerings into a full collection of sophisticated handbags in all shapes and sizes. There are the aforementioned hemp bags with artisanal Asian elements, as well as classic, roomy leather day bags and sleek shagreen clutches for evening. Naturally, milling about in Hong Kong’s endless outdoor markets that teem with jade, Chinese silks and enamel pieces only adds to her inspirations. And from her handy perch in Hong Kong, Kotur is able to travel extensively throughout Asia for materials. She journeys to the Philippines for shell inlay, Shanghai for fabrics and Thailand for lacquerware. The line has been picked up abroad by Harvey Nichols in Hong Kong, Browns in London and Paul Smith in Milan, Paris and London.
Of course, having a stable of prominent inter-national socialites as her besties carrying her bags out to events always helps. London social fixture Lillian von Stauffenberg, whom Kotur befriended at Wellesley, is a big fan. “I am always looking for a new evening bag,” says von Stauffenberg. “Fi’s are the perfect size – they can fit a mobile phone and a lipstick, and they’re chic. I adore all her metal ones too, that are reminiscent of old Cartier clutches.” Celebrities have also taken note. Drew Barrymore, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tilda Swinton and model Jacquetta Wheeler have all bought bags.
Zarina Kitchell, director of merchandising at Harvey Nichols in Hong Kong, calls Kotur “one of the chicest women I’ve ever seen at the country club.” Indeed, with her penchant for Chloé pants and Marni tops paired with a single piece of statement jewelry, Kotur cuts quite a stylish figure. And Kitchell claims she can’t keep her vintage fabric clutches and minaudières in stock.
Perhaps one reason is that, yet again, Kotur has infused her new collection with some of her high-low ideology. In another rather unconventional measure, she has established a broad range in price points, from $200 to $1,500, with nary a bridge line in sight. “I have things that are both really expensive and pretty cheap,” says Kotur, who owns a Verdura cuff but admits to shopping at Target. “That’s what I try to do with my own line, because that’s how most women like me shop – not based on price, but whether we like it or not.”