Photography by Crystal Wise
For Jenya Felder, handbags are personal. She thinks of them not only as an expression of individual style, but as potential heirlooms for her daughters and granddaughters. She also saw her chance to make the fashion industry more sustainable and fill a few gaps along the way. Her brand, Jenya Renée Handbags, launched just a year and a half ago and is already carving out a niche for itself, marrying timeless small-scale designs with ethical sourcing.
“I’ve always loved fashion and always been into handbags, especially petite handbags,” Felder says. “That’s always been kind of my signature thing.”
Felder’s path into luxury design began in the classroom. She earned a degree in marketing and entrepreneurial management from Texas Christian University, with a minor in advertising. She co-founded Narwhal Life, designing a waterproof Bluetooth accessory for insulated cups with a speaker in the lid, which gave her hands-on lessons in product development and retail. But Felder admits, “Speakers aren’t my passion.”…