An Italian holiday home with its own luxury fashion brand? Why, it must be Appassionata Boutique!
For some people, buying a tumbledown farmhouse in a remote corner of Italy and transforming it into two gorgeous, luxury holiday homes would be enough to keep them occupied, but not for interior designer Dawn Cavanagh-Hobbs.
- New Italian fashion brand set to take the luxury handbag market by storm
- Leading businesswoman Dawn Cavanagh-Hobbsmoves from houses to handbags
- Check out the arm candy at Appassionata Boutique
Since 2007, Dawn has moved to Italy, launched family-run company Appassionata and undertaken the restoration of two beautiful properties, teasing them out of a pile of ramshackle farm buildings and turning them into a pair of stunning fractional ownership holiday homes. Only the five bedroom, five bathroom Casa Leopardi, which benefits from its own private pool and gym, still has a fraction available for sale (at £195,000). Such is the speed with which the properties have attracted buyers.
Dawn has also tackled the five acre estate on which the two properties sit, turning the overgrown, rolling hills into an orderly environment packed with olive groves, a vineyard, a lavender plantation and a truffle orchard. The result is that owners of the two houses now benefit from a share in the produce. Once fully mature, the vines are expected to produce around 5,000 bottles of wine per year – not bad between just 20 owners!
Yet all of this was not quite enough to keep Dawn occupied. Thus she set her sights on her next adventure: running a boutique fashion business that challenges the powerhouses of Italy’s leading designers. Dawn explains the inspiration behind her move from houses to handbags,
“While we were creating the interiors for Appassionata’s two holiday homes in Le Marche, I was privileged to meet local artisans whose crafts dated back over several generations of their families. Often these individuals were working out of tiny premises, but the goods they were producing were simply amazing.
“One of the artisans I met was an independent designer who used to produce handbags for leading Italian fashion house Bottega Veneta. Having always been a fan of accessories, I got chatting with him and, just a short while later, the concept of Appassionata Boutique was born!”
Appassionata Boutique sells individually designed handbags of exquisite craftsmanship. Dawn is thrilled to be launching her brand to the market, having already seen the bags flying off her desk while she was preparing for the new website’s photo-shoot. She recalls,
“I had six of the handbags sitting on my desk, ready for the photo-shoot, but people kept popping into the office and wanting to buy them. All six had sold before I realised what was happening, so I had to choose another set of bags to feature in the shoot. I kept those ones hidden until after we had the pictures we needed!”
Owners of the bags have been glowing in their praise for the new brand. Music/video producer Emer Patten, who was one of Dawn’s first customers, was excited to be asked by a restaurant owner if her handbag was Bottega Veneta. She was even more thrilled to inform the owner that her bag was in fact far more exclusive than that!
So, with two fabulous houses, a five acre estate and a luxury fashion brand under her wing, is Dawn ready to relax? Far from it! She laughs,
“I like to keep busy and I’m always looking for the next adventure. It has been brilliant developing Appassionata’s two holiday homes and the Appassionata Boutique brand, but I’m certainly not stopping there. In fact, there’s a rather charming palazzo in Le Marche that’s in need of restoration…”
For more information on Appassionata Boutique, visit http://appassionataboutique.com/about-us.html, like them on Facebook, email dawn@appassionataboutique.com or call +44 (0)7951 674916 in the UK or +39 339 771 9274 in Italy.