An inventive bag of tricks

As couture-adorned A-list celebrities strut down the freshly laid red carpet at this year’s Academy Awards, designer Ashlee Nik will be tuned into the TV coverage and checking Getty Images to see which nominees are sporting her clutches.

“I won’t know until day of,” she confided two weeks before the big night. For Nik, that’s part of the fun — that moment when her work is suddenly revealed for all the world to see.

Nik’s bags are flamboyant and oddball, made from a menagerie of arts and crafts accessories — glitter, seashells, sequins, colored sand and pearls. Hers aren’t your typical handbags; they’re made from acrylic, chalkboard and wood, and they emulate things as different from one another as stop signs, batteries and telephones.

An ashlyn’d kinetic pearls clutch

For the past three years, she’s been producing a successful line dubbed ashlyn’d out of her parents’ garage.

From the street, the family’s quaint cottage-style house in Westwood is nothing unusual: Toddler toys litter the patio and designer pooches frolic.

Nik, 28, grew up in this house, where she’s set up shop out back. She lives nearby with her husband of four years and their 18-month-old daughter, Everleigh.

“It makes work feel less like work when you get to be around your family all the time,” she said, stroking a warmly snuggled Maltese on her lap.

The idea behind the business started four years ago, when wedding invites were pouring in, and Nik and her husband were on the circuit. “I wanted an evening bag that looked different from what anybody else had,” she said. That’s when she got the idea for the perfect accouterment to her black-tie gowns: a clutch that looks like marble. “The only option at that time was Edie Parker, and she did bags that were made out of glitter, and they were retailing around $1,500,” Nik said.

Nik decided to design the clutch herself.

“I went to my mom, and we made a sample for ourselves [from acrylic], and people loved it, and it took off,” she said. During those first few months, Nik and her mother, Denise Lewinstein (the “d” in ashlyn’d), figured out production. “We wanted everything to be made in the U.S., so we played around with a few manufacturers until we got the quality exactly where we wanted it.”

Nik was no stranger to the fashion world; she’d worked as a designer for J Brand jeans and as a buyer for Alice + Olivia before embarking on this handbag venture. 

“For me, it was the juxtaposition of what materials would look interesting next to an evening dress. The idea of having this beautiful beaded dress next to a bag that looks like granite was inspiring for me,” she said during an interview on her parents’ patio.

By now, Nik has become known in the fashion world for funky clutches, which can be found from the Middle East all the way to London. They run about $500, still a hefty sum, but well below Edie Parker.

In 2013, Lady Gaga and E! News correspondent Maria Menounos sported ashlyn’d clutches at the Oscars. Last year, Cheryl Strayed, author of the memoir-turned-movie “Wild,” toted a bag as well.

“This one’s Lady Gaga,” Nik said, sifting through her handbag stock, and flaunting the opalescent clutch that the outrageous superstar rocked three years ago. Made of acrylic, like many of her bags, this one looks like a slab of dark-swirling marble, something you’d expect to see on your kitchen countertop and not on your handbag.

“It’s not just a bag, it’s also a conversation piece,” Nik said.

Weeks away from one of the fashion world’s biggest photo ops, Nik didn’t have time to meditate on which actresses might be carrying her designs. Instead, she was working to fill a hefty order for fashion retailer Intermix of sequin-filled acrylic clutches.

In the backhouse, Nik, Lewinstein and best friend-turned-employee Charlotte Anheier, who serves as president of ashlyn’d, patiently sifted multicolored sequins through a funnel into a narrow rectangular opening that poured into her double-encased acrylic handbag. Somehow, with a whole lot of patience, it looked as though the see-through acrylic bags were filling up with sequins.

By early afternoon, Lewinstein had come down with a mean headache. As she left the makeshift factory in search of an aspirin, Nik half-joked to her mother: “Too many sequins.”

Nik said she works off of her mother’s strengths; the pair collaborates to design bags that can appeal to multiple generations, both youthful and mature. Nik said her father is also instrumental in developing the line — a strong businessman, he ran a very successful furniture store for more than 45 years. “My dad has always been our strongest supporter and our on-the-side consultant,” Nik said.

Ashlyn’d will launch a jewelry-inspired spring collection later this month with clutches that are intended to act as a piece of jewelry — flashy and glistering with pearls and stones. “It’s very embellished and dramatic,” Nik said.

And yet, underlying it all, there’s an overpowering sense of family and tradition at the foundation of the business. Nik, no doubt, will be surrounded by her parents, husband and daughter as she watches for her work amid the red carpet parade to the Oscars.