Jayne Esteve-Cure, Creative Director for Design-A-Bag, rewarded Marie Cabirou with the overall prize of the 5th Design-A-Bag Competition, during the Award Presentation Ceremony held on 31st March 2011.

The French student Marie Cabirou graduated from ESAA Duperre School in Paris. She acquired experience in accessory and jewellery, having working for Camille Lescure, Christian Lacroix, Franck Sorbier, Shourouk... For the Design-A-Bag Competition, she combined her passion for fashion and jewellery by designing an exquisite clutch bag inspired by “the force of nature” and her fascination for materials. The “Gorgon Medusa” bag mixes leather with metal chains, playing with the concepts of gravity and lightness. The original way of carrying it, by three rings to wear on the fingers, makes it a jewel in itself.

As overall winner, Marie Cabirou was offered by ARS ARPEL GROUP the opportunity to join a four-week training program at the Ars Sutoria school in Milan, where she attended bag pattern making courses. “I had the incredible opportunity to learn bag pattern making in the Ars Sutoria school. Having a global vision of all the possibilities to construct bags is very rewarding for me. I discovered what kind of idea can work with each technic. Designers need to have technical knowledge to complete their work. I learned the construction about each big category of bag in a professional way”, Marie says. During this intensive training, she had the chance to produce a professional prototype of her bag, that will be shown at the Fashion Access March 2012 fair in Hong-Kong.