When I emigrated with my family to Curaçao in 2008 and thus left my life as a working mother in the Netherlands, I quickly realized that the island life was not complete without challenges. After about 6 months of tasting the island life, I decided to do something creative with a friend, everything has been thought about, we made cushion covers, Christmas hangers from clay, memo boards and wooden hangers etc. Finally I continued independently. At one point there were about 10 addresses in Curaçao where Liefe was available. What started with driftwood Christmas trees from small to large, was expanded with hand-painted wooden pendants, key rings of fabric & wood, birth pendants etc. Besides many hours of drilling, sanding, painting and painting in my garage, especially the early mornings on weekends were reserved for family trips to the rugged north coast of Curaçao, strolling for beautiful pieces of driftwood, during those quests the best creative ideas came up. After 6 fantastic but also very busy years for Liefe, our Curaçao adventure came to an end. Once back in the Netherlands, I took a break until I revived Liefe again in 2015, full of creative ideas. In that year we launched a webshop and soon my regular customers on Curaçao were able to find Liefe online. The Liefe range has expanded enormously over the years. Especially the various Liefe bags are known to many. What started with the XL beachbag & Clutch made from old mail bags and designed, produced and painted for the full 100% by myself, slowly grew into something that I really couldn't manage on my own anymore. Liefe needed extra hands, at first I didn't want to hand over the production, besides Liefe I also had a job and a family. By coincidence someone came across my path who nowadays takes care of the production of the bags. Since then I have the time to implement my creative ideas, design new models, and thereby grow further with Liefe. The realization of the Liefe bag is a sustainable process, old tent cloth is the main ingredient of the Liefe bag, the tent cloths are manually cleaned with water and large stains are removed, no chemicals are used here. Because of the use of old tent cloth, every Liefe bag is unique in appearance, every piece of tent cloth is different, so every Liefe bag is different in color, a patch here, a stitching there, a stain, these are the things that make the Liefe bag, the paint I use to paint the bags is not harmful to the environment. In short, we take the environment into account during the Liefe production process.

 

Love Frederieke