Bag Lady -- Seattle-Area Native's Success Designing Handbags In New York City Is The Result Of Long Hours, Hard Work And Dedication

NEW YORK - Tonya Hawkes perches on a long-legged chair in front of a desk piled with sketches, pencils and pens, and fashion magazines. Tacked to the wall are snapshots of Tokyo street fashion - she took them herself on a recent research trip to Japan - and at her feet is a heap of purses, tote bags and the kind of smart little backpacks usually seen slung over the shoulders of stylish urban women.

Wearing gray pin-striped, stove-pipe pants and a matching bustier with T-shirt - she made the ensemble even though she claims she's too busy to sew much anymore - her long blond hair tucked casually behind one ear, the 25-year-old Seattle-area native easily fits the part of the energetic, up-and-coming Seventh Avenue fashion designer - which is exactly what she is.

For the past year Hawkes has been one of two handbag designers for DKNY, Donna Karan's highly successful bridge label that includes a full line of accessories. Though her name isn't on the bags she designs, some of her signature touches include innovative hardware that she designs herself - one of the backpacks she created for spring closes with a tiny, silver-toned clothespin - and shapes not traditionally associated with fashion handbags and totes. Another of her spring totes is a denim tool bag with a wealth of accordion pockets suggestive of the useful pouch pockets built into work belts for gardeners.

"I try new shapes all the time," says Hawkes. "I like to mix fashion with function and I always have ideas. I do have a very strong imagination."

A friendly, self-confident young woman who has somehow managed not to pick up the hipper-than-thou attitude common on Seventh Avenue, Hawkes already has quite a resume .

After graduating from Issaquah High School in 1987, she talked her way into the textile and apparel-design program at Seattle Central Community College despite the fact, she now admits, she couldn't sew. (Sticking with the program meant "learning a new language," says Hawkes. " `Bias,' `dog-foot,' `blind hem,' I didn't know anything. I had to work harder than everybody else.")

Graduating in 1989, she worked for nine months for Seattle designer Karen Bell, then took off for Europe with her portfolio under her arm. After months of vagabonding through Paris, London, Barcelona and Nice, and around Greece and Turkey, she hadn't found a job but she had found her future husband, a young Australian businessman she met on the Riviera.

Once back in the U.S., she camped out in New York, trying to figure out if she could support herself peddling one-of-a-kind outfits to East Village boutiques. Looking for brighter opportunities, Hawkes headed down to Los Angeles, where she thought Hollywood might offer a livelihood for someone with a flair for over-the-top apparel design.

But her Los Angeles sojourn didn't last long. Love drove her to Australia, where she married her boyfriend and did custom apparel design work, including some avant-garde women's outfits that won a couple of big Australian design awards.

One winner was a woman's suit designed to be worn to a prestigious Melbourne horse race. It was in white linen decorated with a swath of about 50 toy globes hand sewn up the front of the jacket. Another 30 or 40 golf-ball-sized globes were sewn onto a matching white hat. The result was an outrageous showstopper created for a wealthy, flamboyant woman who was part of Melbourne high society. That custom outfit, and others by Hawkes, often appeared on the society pages of the city's newspapers.

After two years she and her husband moved to Seattle, where she worked briefly in a bridal shop. But they soon decided that Seattle didn't offer the kind of career opportunities they wanted, so they went back to New York in August 1992. Determined to get her foot in the door, Hawkes took her portfolio to DKNY. She started working in the clothing design department in October of the same year, and within six months had moved into accessories.

These days Hawks puts in about 55 hours a week designing bags, though she's not complaining: "I love the satisfaction of the models at Bryant Park bookin' out on the runway with my bags," she says referring to the seasonal fashion shows for the fashion media and store executives.

Work doesn't leave much time for the outdoor activities, like bicycling, she enjoyed while growing up in the Pacific Northwest. But since she and her husband will soon be moving from a tiny upper Westside apartment to their recently purchased home in Westchester, N.Y., she hopes to get out more on her bicycle and roller blades.

Still, she figures that giving up a few leisure activities is one of the concessions she needs to make to accomplish her long-term goal: "I want to own my own company someday," she says. "I want to have clothes and accessories. I know a lot of people say that but I really think I can do it."

Stefonay Sinclaire , Hawkes' mother, says that even as a young girl, her daughter didn't mind rolling up her sleeves and working for things she wanted. The fifth of six children, Hawkes started taking care of her own horse when she was 8, said Sinclaire. She also trained it so well that she and the horse won numerous riding competitions.

Later, when Sinclaire and Hawkes' father were divorced and money was tight, Hawkes improvised eye-catching clothes out of thrift-store finds and fabric she found in her mother's sewing room.

Sinclaire had been a Seattle-area fashion model and was an expert home sewer, so Hawkes had always been exposed to fashion.

"When she was in high school, there were a few years when I didn't have money for clothes for the kids," said Sinclaire, now living in Bellevue. "So she went in my sewing room, got a piece of very nice fabric, cut a big circle out of the middle and sewed something. I can't even remember what. But it was so bad that I looked at her loopy seams and raggedy edges and thought, this girl will never be a seamstress."

But Hawkes obviously had style. "For a high school prom dress she bought an old satin cocktail dress at Goodwill and draped a piece of black satin I had over it and tied it somehow in a big bow," said Sinclaire."She found some elbow-length evening gloves at Goodwill and she looked just great."

Hisako Nakaya, head of the textile and apparel-design department at Seattle Central Community College, remembers Hawkes as a creative student, though not one who got the best grades. "I always knew she'd get far because she was so talented," said Nakaya. "Her skills weren't that great but she was always very, very talented."

These days Hawkes says she admires the work of such innovative designers as Issey Miyake, Isaac Mizrahi, John Galliano, Romeo Gigli and her top boss, Donna Karan, who she describes as creative and open-minded about new ideas.

And if she ever starts her own company, you can bet she won't be turning out safe little suits for the office. At Seattle Central Hawkes says she specialized in "alternative women's clothes - stuff you'd have to have guts to wear." Says her mother: "Tonya never did care much about ordinary clothes, sportswear and that kind of thing. She always wanted to make dress-up clothes."