The label started in 2015 out of New York with a small run and grew through direct sales and word of mouth rather than wholesale, which is an unusual route for a leather goods brand. The design language is confident and graphic: strong hardware, saturated colour, and shapes that read clearly from a distance rather than rewarding close inspection. That approach descends more from the American accessory tradition than the European one, where the interest is in the silhouette rather than the stitching. It arrived at the moment the market was tired of quiet, which helped.

The Kuei is the signature of the Brandon Blackwood range, a structured shape with an oversized closure, and the soft medium version relaxes it into something more everyday. Valentina shoulder bags and the Mini Valentina cover the compact end, cut close to the body. Nia bags in medium and standard are the most practical shapes in the range. The Luna and the Imani clutch sit at the evening end, and they are the pieces where the hardware does the most work.

Structured bags with strong hardware have one predictable weakness, which is that the corners take the damage and show it first. The Kuei and the Nia are the shapes most affected because they sit upright and meet surfaces edge first. The softer versions avoid that and lose some of the graphic quality in exchange. Colour is where this label is genuinely strong and where the competition is weakest, so buying a neutral here slightly misses the point. If you take one thing away, buy the colour you would not normally buy, because that is what the brand is actually for.