Inside Tyler Ellis’s LA dwelling: Princess Beatrice’s handbag designer opens the doors to French-style mansion

Tyler Ellis’s beautiful French-style mansion in Brentwood, a stone’s throw from Bel Air, would make the excellent setting for a film. And she wouldn’t want to look far for the plot – no additional than her personal life story, the truth is. In this peaceable spot, surrounded by greenery, she tells us all about it.

Since hers is the title behind a few of the hottest purses on the crimson carpet – Princess Beatrice, Jennifer Lopez, Beyoncé, Cate Blanchett and Selena Gomez are all followers – it’s no shock to hear that Tyler’s background was inventive. Her father was designer Perry Ellis, who put sportswear on the trend map; her mom is TV screenwriter and producer Barbara Gallagher.

“My father was very advanced for his time and so was my mother. She was a writer on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and produced Saturday Night Live. She was and is an elegant and very interesting woman,” Tyler, 39, tells us. Her mother and father could have had loads in widespread, however they weren’t a pair. Back in 1984, when such preparations have been nonetheless uncommon, Tyler was born of their shared want to have a toddler. 

It was a mutual buddy who launched them. Perry, who was homosexual, informed Barbara he wished to be a father. Barbara, who was 39, informed him she wished to be a mom and that she didn’t have a accomplice, however was going to wait a few years to see if she might do it the conventional means.

As she was beautiful and Perry preferred her all-American look, he determined to see what occurred. And after some time, they each determined that they’d discovered the splendid candidate in one another. They have been proper.

BATTLING ON

Tragically, simply 18 months after the pair welcomed their daughter, Perry unexpectedly turned very unwell and died of what was identified as an AIDS-related sickness. He was 46. Fortunately, Barbara rose admirably to the problem of single parenthood.

“My mother decided to give me as normal a childhood as possible. She asked her parents to live with us for six months of the year so that I would have my grandfather Harold as a father figure,” Tyler says.

“She also kept me away from any kind of superficiality. For years, no one cared who my father was. If I was asked at school, I would answer with a vague: ‘Oh, he was a designer.’’”Of course, Perry Ellis was rather more than that. Along with Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren, he was certainly one of the huge names of the late Nineteen Seventies.

When nearly everybody was carrying fairly, traditional garments, he supplied younger peopl e unstructured designs with double shoulder pads, huge trousers and tops two sizes too huge – just about what you see on the avenue nowadays. Now, unique Perry Ellis jumpers are collectors’ gadgets.

Along along with his inventive facet, he was a savvy entrepreneur who had studied enterprise administration. By the time he died, he had constructed a multinational firm with a turnover of a whole bunch of tens of millions of {dollars}.

FAMILY TRAITS

“My mother says we have very similar personalities: we both take our profession very seriously, dream big and are content only with the best of the best,” Tyler says.

She laughs off ideas that she has inherited her mother and father’ skills. “I wish! What your parents do provide, through your upbringing, is your approach to life and your work ethic.”

Tyler studied communications at Boston University however she’d all the time liked equipment, so she determined to achieve expertise in the business by working as an intern with Michael Kors.

I began as an assistant at his New York Fashion Week present, she says. “It was there, watching Michael adding a belt or deciding to raise a hemline by a centimetre, that I discovered the value of details, those little things that change everything.

“Later, I spent some time in his Madison Avenue store, behind the counter. When I finally said goodbye, I asked him for advice. He told me: ‘Surround yourself with the best team you can get’.”

IN THE BAG

She launched her personal line of luggage, made in France, in 2022, and referred to as it Tyler Alendara, her two given names. “I had discovered to my amazement that, all around the world, the women carrying luxury bags were all using the same brands and practically the same models,” she says.

“I said to myself: ‘It doesn’t make sense.’ So I decided to make my designs luxurious but also special, unique and more modern.”

At first, discovering artisans to produce them proved a problem. “The best and most sought-after workshops were not interested in a company as small as mine and refused to consider working with me. It was frustrating,” she remembers.

Finally, after three years of wrestle, she discovered a small manufacturing unit in Florence, the place the house owners, a father and son, understood that she wished high quality, not amount. They use solely the best possible supplies and finishes, and all the things may be customised in accordance to the shopper’s style.

“My bags are lined in a shade I call ‘Thayer blue’, in memory of Thayer Avenue in Los Angeles, where I grew up. It’s a vibrant shade, which makes it much more practical than classic black when you’re trying to find something inside them,” she says.

“I don’t have a logo as such, but I do use a little emblem of a pine cone, which represents spiritual awakening, and also a reproduction of my father’s penmanship, taken from an envelope he addressed to me on my first birthday. That’s my tribute to him and a way of having him by my side.”

MAJOR MILESTONE

Once she felt that her father may very well be happy with her, she determined to embrace him in her firm’s title, altering it to Tyler Ellis.

Today, her success is undisputed, however she explains it with typical modesty. “In the past few years, following Michael Kors’s advice, I’ve put together my perfect team and I’m happy with the results. Honestly, I don’t think anyone reinvents the wheel when it comes to designing a bag.

“I’ve flashy ones which are excellent to go together with a quite simple outfit the place the accent is on the accent. For a red-carpet occasion the place the star is an excellent couture gown and the bag is a supporting actor, I slot in with the couturier’s imaginative and prescient. I would like my purchasers to be joyful; I don’t want to be the most vital” she says. 

Tyler credit her husband, funding skilled Ben Shriner, for his help. He offers with the funds and generally advises on contracts or gross sales methods. The couple met in 2012, on a blind date at a bar in New York. “He knew he was going to meet me; I didn’t know I would meet him,” she says. “We immediately hit it off. Luckily, I was living in London at the time, which meant we enjoyed a friendship, which then turned into a long-distance, slow, old-fashioned courtship.”

EMERALD ISLE HERITAGE

“We got married in 2014 and our son arrived in 2021. I had a very easy pregnancy and, as it was during the Covid-19 pandemic, a very quiet one. We chose the name Fitz Harold Ellis Shriner: Fitz because we both have Irish backgrounds and it means ‘son of our families’ in Irish, and Harold after my maternal grandfather.”

Fitz is a cheerful soul, like his mom, and simply as energetic. She tells us that he’s stuffed with curiosity, a “discoverer” who doesn’t like standard toys. His first phrase was “car” – Bentleys are his favourites – and “garage” was his second.

“So we’re off to a good start,” says Tyler, who shares his ardour. “I’m lucky to be able to work from home a lot, so I can enjoy his childhood as much as possible. Although I have an office close by, I’m often with him right here in the kitchen.”

She and Ben have created an idyllic atmosphere for Fitz to develop up in. Having acquired the French-style villa in 2017, they restored it for household use earlier than including a brand new guesthouse that’s nearly as massive. The result’s stunning, daring and trendy – solely in step with Tyler’s historical past.

SEE: At dwelling with the Conrans: Design dynasty open the doors to Grade II-listed dwelling as soon as owned by the Duke of Wellington

INTERVIEW & PRODUCTION: VICTORIA DE ALCAHUD

PHOTOS: CESAR VILLORIA

HAIR & MAKE-UP: TAARY MOY

BAGS: TYLER ELLIS