Guccio Gucci may have invented the bamboo wood handle purse, but Ashley Robin is making it Western chic. Robin may channel vintage Western vibes while tooling the leather and sewing embroidered patches and saddle stitches onto purses, but her designs are fit to walk any runway.
The Virginia-based creator didn’t start out with the plan to focus on leatherwork. She moved from art school to floral design, but it’s easy to see the 38-year-old found her calling in the colorful, handcrafted purses she produces from her farm.
“I love what I do,” Robin says. “I love creating! It’s fun for me to get up and go to work every day. It doesn’t seem like actual work.”
But work she does, spending hours designing each purse, from the color of the base design and complementary stitches to the art designs that are in either leather pieces or embroidery. It’s a true work of art, straight from her heart.
From Petals to Purses
Art has always inspired Robin. She attended art school before stepping into a career in floral design. The vibrant colors in the flowers always drew her in.
“I started out in art school, then worked as a floral designer for weddings,” she says. “I picked up leather work accidentally and started doing it part-time in 2014.”
Robin had long felt love for any vintage Western purse, so her tooling took on that vintage style.
“Tooled leather work is what drew me in, and that’s how I started,” she says. “I have a collection of vintage Western purses, and I felt like I started tooling with the vintage vibe.”
In 2016, she and her husband moved to a farm two hours from where she was working. It was that move that prompted a shift in her creative outlook. Robin recalls that her husband supported her decision to focus on leather craft.
The part-time work became her full-time career, and her focus on trial-and-error education grew.
“When I started, there were a handful of people making videos,” Robin says. “I watched all of [saddle maker] Don Gonzales’ videos on tooling, and everything on YouTube.”
She began to incorporate the colors and flower shapes she knew so well in her designs. At the farm, she planted a garden that not only inspired her but offered reference material at hand.
“The flowers—I love flowers!” she says. “If I didn’t do leatherwork, I would [still] be a floral designer. I grow as many flowers as I can and we have honeybees, so [these are] things I love that I use in the creations.
“I don’t like grays or neutral colors, and I’m drawn to green, purple, yellows,” she adds. “I say green is my favorite shade of suede. I say I don’t like pink, but when I create, I’m always adding pink to it. It complements a lot of other colors.”
Fashion-Forward Florals
As her leather tooling skills grew, the early creations of wallets and notebooks gave way to purse designs. Soon, Robin was looking to add to her skills thanks to a fellow creator she followed, Die Trying TX, who focuses on chainstitch embroidery.
Robin scoured the internet for a machine that would create the same vintage look for embroidered patches, adding it to a 100-year-old sewing machine that she was also learning to use.
“I found an old machine that was used for making cowboy boots, so I decided to learn how to do the stitching,” she explains. “There are lots of books on leatherwork, that was easy. It was the sewing machines that are a little different; there is not a lot of information on the 100-year-old sewing machines. I had to figure it out.”
Soon, Robin was not only tooling leather but embroidering on a sewing machine and sewing onto leather. Her artistic process evolved, and her work took a new spin.
“When I started, I did wallets and notebooks, then it transitioned to larger purses,” she says. “I do make smaller items, like wallets, but this past year was a transition from tooling to more stitching. In 2025, I look forward to doing more tooling with the boot stitch design.”
Her followers, all 58,000-plus on Instagram (@ashleyrobindesigns), love and appreciate her work. They also influence it. She asks their preference on colors, tooling or stitching and more in the stories feature on the app. That feedback and her own interests fuel her design inspirations.
“I also look to see what is going on in the fashion world,” she says. “There are a handful of influencers I follow to see what trends are coming. Then I begin to piece together what I feel inspired to make.”
She’s been inspired to create a line with beach ponies that connect the viewer to the Chincoteague, Va.,-based Marguerite Henry story Misty of Chincoteague, and has even used her current favorite pair of boots to inspire a line.
“I have a slight obsession with Chincoteague Ponies and Assateague Island in general and usually try to do a collection around Pony Penning Week [in July],” Robin wrote in a post with a photo of an embroidered pony last year. “This year I’m dedicating the whole month of July to ‘beachy’ themed pieces and will try to have some things ready to ship before the pony swim, so if you’re going and wanted to traipse around the island with a fancy leather accessory, stay tuned.”
Though a suede and leather purse isn’t the first accessory one might take island hopping, it’s the first accessory many want to add to their closet. Robin’s website updates sell out quickly, with fun names like the ‘60s “Granny” style for a popular piece.
The flowers that started her career path still inspire her today. Mixed with Western-themed purses and patches, it’s easy to envision carrying one of Robin’s creations like a model on a runway, no matter if that runway is the National Finals Rodeo or a night out in Cowtown.
For more info, visit ashleyrobindesigns.com.
This article about Ashley Robin appeared in the February 2025 issue of Western Life Today magazine. Click here to subscribe!
