Handbags and Alligator Nuggets

From Louisiana to Italy, the exotic skin trade is a journey of conservation and controversy

- BY CAROLINE HATCHETT

Overnight, workers had festooned the Park Hyatt Milan with wreaths, baubles, and Christmas trees. Prime retail season had arrived, and I was not immune to the collective zeal of credit card-swiping tourists who gathered in this cradle of European luxury. A few steps from the hotel, I bought a pair of Prada loafers inside Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Italy's oldest and most elegant shopping mall. As a tour guide pointed out the Duomo's pink Candoglia marble and gilded statue of the Virgin Mary, I could not help but notice a Gucci billboard competing for worship at the opposite end of the piazza.

That's why I think I was so taken aback to find a primordial piece of the South in Milan: Louisiana gator.

The hotel concierge had arranged a visit to Donna Elissa, a handbag maker tucked into a discreet building in the Cinque Vie neighborhood. As I walked in, I inhaled the aroma of a small-town shoe shop. Shelves held rainbow stacks of leather, and bag patterns hung from hooks. I took a few pictures, but the general manager, Giacomo Cannoni, asked me to delete them. Trade secrets. Donna Elissa produces bags for Armani, Roberto Cavalli, Loro Piana, and more labels Cannoni would not divulge. It takes artisans up to 22 hours to assemble each bag by hand, and the atelier makes just 200 a month. Six of what I would later discover to be $25,500 handbags, the color of limestone clay, were displayed on a table and practically purred to be caressed.

Notably, Donna Elissa specializes in exotic leather: some crocodile, ostrich, python, snakeskin, and zebra. But mostly alligator. “Were these Louisiana gators?” I asked. “Yes,” Cannoni confirmed. “It’s the best.”