About Amore Bags

It happened completely by chance. Michelle Zerillo-Sosa, one of the creative minds behind the luxury publication Dolce Magazine, was cycling through town when she rolled passed a garage sale. Something caught her eye — and down she fell. The stumble, however, didn’t hold her back from crossing the yard and approaching the object. It was a vintage doctor’s bag. Worn, torn and kissed by age, the piece seemed to whisper to her stories of the lifesaver that once carried this bag from appointment to appointment, from house call to house call. Michelle brought the bag home and let her imagination run wild. After a few hours with a spray paint can and some leather primer, the bag still shone with antique memories — but it was refurbished and reimagined with splashes of colour. It wasn’t long after that Michelle sat down with fashion icon Sylvia Mantella, who laid eyes on the revamped treasures and fell, quite like Michelle, head over heels for the concept. This was when Amore Bags was born.

“I started finding vintage doctor’s bags online from all over the globe — Bosnia, Paris, Russia, Texas — and some were as old as 1920,” says Michelle. “Each was one of a kind and with a lot of history, a lot of wear and tear.”

Amore Bags is now an established business, in which Michelle scours the globe for vintage doctor’s bags and brings them back to beauty using eye-catching painting techniques and with the assistance of artists from her local creative community. But for the designer, Amore Bags is much more than a creative outlet: it’s an opportunity to spread love to those who need it. Thirty per cent of the proceeds benefit Doctors Without Borders, a renowned non-profit organization that provides urgent medical care to areas that need it most.

“I’ve always known about the incredible work of Doctors Without Borders and was inspired to tie this great organization to my bags,” says Michelle. “After all, these are vintage bags that most likely once belonged to doctors. Now, when I refurbish and redesign a bag, it can still go on to help people in a similar way.”

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