Hi! Laura here 👋🏻

If you’ve been here a while, you probably know me as the Vogelle girl. The one who designs handbags with a production team in Milan, sources leather from Florence, and somehow built a sold-out shoulder bag design from a college apartment in Boulder, Colorado. That design ended up on influencers around the world, on reality TV, and in boutiques nationwide.

And if you just found me through a TikTok or Instagram Reel about how to navigate Lake Como, hi, same person, different era.

Vogelle - The Backstory

I started Vogelle in March of 2020. The world was shut down, nobody was traveling, and I was twenty-one at CU Boulder, launching a handbag brand after my study abroad semester in Milan.

The origin was always Italy and travel.

I studied abroad, fell completely in love with Italy, and couldn’t find a small and secure bag worth buying under five hundred dollars. So I made one. I met my manufacturers organically while traveling, the way only things that are truly meant to happen actually happen, and built the brand between Milan and Boulder with way more optimism than experience.

I made a YouTube video about how it all came together, and over one hundred thousand people have watched it. A lot of you are here from that video.

I never stopped traveling. And if you’ve followed Vogelle for any length of time, you’ve watched me slowly pull it in this direction. Blogs about Milan, the Dolomites, and what to pack for Spain. Travel has always been underneath everything here. I just never fully committed. Until now!

Next Chapter

I’m twenty eight, living in Los Angeles, and I’ve reached over one million people around the world through my travel content in the last month alone. It finally feels completely obvious what this brand is supposed to be.

Instagram

View on Instagram

The handbags aren’t gone, they’re just a smaller part of the story. What I’m leaning into is real travel. Travel that actually changes you. Living abroad, spending time with locals, and immersing yourself in a culture long enough that it leaves a mark. I’ve been chasing that feeling since I was seventeen living in Mexico City for a modeling contract, and it’s always been the real thread running through this brand.

I’ve been partnered with a travel agency in Lake Como (IC Bellagio) since 2021. They saw what this was before I fully did.

I’m moving this newsletter to Substack where I’ll write to you directly. Trip recaps, real recommendations, what I’m packing, business takeaways, and the unfiltered side of being an entrepreneur in your twenties. Growing an online platform, running a marketing agency, figuring it out in real time from my corner of Venice Beach, California. Mostly travel, but also everything that comes with building a life around it. There are community aspects coming as well…

Around the World!

If that sounds like your thing, I’m so glad you’re here. If you subscribed for handbag drops and this isn’t what you signed up for, no hard feelings. Feel free to unsubscribe anytime.

But if you’ve ever emailed me asking for Italy recommendations after buying a bag (so many of you have!), found me through a travel video, or just want to follow along as I figure out what twenty eight looks like as an entrepreneur, I think you’ll like where this is going.

A few practical things worth knowing: The handbags and accessories are still available online, and the travel blog is still very much live with all of my in-depth destination guides, every recommendation, every link, everything you need to actually plan a trip. Think of that as the main resource.

This newsletter is the personal side, my notes, my recaps, and personal thoughts that don’t make it into a formatted blog post. Going forward this is the only place I’ll be sending emails from. See you in the next one!

Follow along: Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn

-Laura