She remembers it like it was yesterday.
A shy 11-year-old girl in a red blouse and black skirt on the Turkish border “in sticky weather” looking wistfully into the distance, clinging to her family’s two suitcases and memories of Bulgaria.
Unknown to her then, as she crossed the border from Bulgaria to Turkey with her parents and brother, she also left behind her childhood, one filled with happy days, endless laughter, horses, fig and pomegranate trees and the love of doting grandparents. Things would never be the same again.
In the suitcases were the family’s only belongings, mostly warm clothes, whatever they could hastily gather before making the long trip, as one of 360,000 ethnic refugees who had to leave Bulgaria for Turkey in the summer of 1989.
“My childhood ended, there and then, in the middle of that,” says Neri Karra, who is 37 now, and owns an eponymous line of luxury leather handbags. She retails in 26 stores across 14 countries, her most recent addition being the Neri Karra boutique in Melrose Arch, a swanky shopping and residential district in Johannesburg.
But it’s that indelible scene on the border that the London-based designer goes back to for inspiration, every day.
Penniless, hungry and homeless, the family stayed in an immigrant camp for a month living off refugee fare.
“They gave us grapes one day, I remember, it was like they were handing out jewelry,” recalls Karra.
“The moment we stepped foot in Istanbul, my father cried with joy. We were emotional, chaotic, nervous, excited, all at the same time.”
Thereafter, Karra was enrolled into a “ghetto school” in Istanbul with 85 students and no teachers on some days, sharing a desk with three others.
Her father worked as a welder and her mother as a cleaner in a factory. There were days when the family went to bed hungry.
“I was grateful my parents could get me notebooks and pencils for school. I was grateful for the littlest thing. My only objective was to study hard and change my family’s circumstances.”
She was consistently top of her class, and after college, received financial aid to study in the United States (US), leaving from Istanbul to Miami with one suitcase at the age of 18, and graduating university with three gold medals.
“No one in my family had gone to university before me. They didn’t speak English,” says Karra, who speaks five languages.
Sitting On A Fig Tree
She appreciated the entrepreneurial spirit of the people she met in the US, and decided she should start her own business back home. As a child, she had loved fashion. Afternoons were spent sitting on the branches of a fig tree in her home in southern Bulgaria, leafing through the pages of German fashion magazines.
“Living in communism in Bulgaria, you didn’t have nice things, so I wanted to make beautiful objects,” she says. Her grandfather crafted saddles for the horses. That was Karra’s first tryst with leather.
“All the dots in life connect at some point. My life has always been this way. The trick is to stay connected, to what makes you come alive, and I call that love. The love you have for what you do.”
Karra was only 22 when she embarked on her first entrepreneurial venture, and set up her first showroom at Asenovgrad in her hometown in Bulgaria. Today, she returns to the town every two months, evisiting fond memories.
Celebrity Clients
Karra works with Italian leather to make wallets, handbags, clutches, purses and accessories, for men and women. She also makes them with faux animal skin prints. She owns a design studio outside of Florence. Her parents are also keenly involved in the business, running her art factory in Istanbul. Her biggest market is Russia. What next? She is closely eyeing the Middle East for new stores and has a proposed expansion plan in the US. She has gifted her handbags to Hollywood star Anne Hathaway, and counts among her clients supermodel Elle Macpherson who she says has bought from her.
Karra is constantly shuttling between Istanbul and London, a city she loves, overseeing a business that has a sales turnover of $12 million. She has a PhD in Management, has published two academic books and often teaches at universities in London.
Needless to say, she has a busy unstoppable career. Is that why she is still single? Karra says she is not averse to marriage.
“I haven’t met the right man yet. I will get married for love,” she says. Karra has a quiet determination about her.
A soft-spoken but confident and hard-hitting businesswoman, yet, it’s her 11-year-old self on the Turkish border that she constantly looks up to. “When I stood on that border, I had a vision. It motivated me to create a better future for my family. It changed my life.” And she would not change a thing about it.