The Divine Tribe
Elison Pickett and Chad Ypon are The Divine Tribe. This New York husband-and-wife design team creates hand-crafted bags and accessories made from premium leathers and exotic skins—lamb, eel, snake, ostrich, stingray and more.
Colors are rich, styling is elegant and spare, the aesthetic is sophisticated and eminently-wearable. Great attention to detail makes these bags and accessories distinctive and desirable.
The Divine Tribe works with glamorous skins, each with its own character, each one unique, and every one with a distinctive beauty. An important mission for the label is to make these striking, farm-raised leathers available to a wider audience. At the same time, Pickett and Ypon never use any skins that are endangered as they are deeply committed to maintaining the environment.
“We strive to have a product that is as close to 100% handmade as possible, to add elements of design that make the buyer feel they are getting a unique accessory”, explains Elison Pickett. “to give each person who buys one of our creations an object of desire and a keepsake”. The hardware used on every bag is specially-designed, and there is a recurring use of the feather as a symbol in all the work of the divine tribe.
The divine tribe is meant for the confident, enlightened woman or man who is not afraid to push the barriers of fashion a bit and stand out from the crowd. While the divine tribe is of-the-moment, the designers are not driven solely by trends. Each bag, belt, and accessory is labor-intensive, and international in its appeal. It is for the consumer who wants something special, something chic and refined, who appreciates true quality. The divine tribe is not merely a label, but a lifestyle.
Partners in business, design and life, Chad Ypon, a native of Manila, and Elison Pickett, originally from Boston, have been designing together since they first met. Traveling around the world, they studied leather skills and jewelry-making from the locals of many foreign locales. After settling for awhile in India, then Spain, Pickett, a former fashion designer, and Ypon, a photographer, decided to return to New York (where they had first met) and launch The Divine Tribe.
With New York as their home base, Chad and Elison still continue to travel, and can often be found riding their bikes around the city or doing yoga.
The Divine Tribe is carried in some of the finest stores and boutiques throughout the United States and have been featured in W, Surface, WWD accessories magazine, Teen Vogue, lucky, Zink, Glamour, Vivre, Zoozoom.com, Hamptons, among others, as well as a recent appearance in Desperate Housewives.
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