The project
Morgana, Molly and Io
Morgana and Molly are my cats, and they were in the name before there was a brand. They sit in the middle of every working session, from the drawing to the assembly: silent leads, and at times a nuisance. They could not be left out of a project that is about us.
I am a support educator and I work every day with blind teenagers. From them I learned to look at the world with my hands as well, not only with my eyes. One day I asked myself why a bag should only be good to look at, and why it could not be felt.
I wanted raised lettering — something my students could read by running their fingers across the shell.
I could not make it on my own. My partner works in robotics, in industrial automation: turning an idea into a 3D-printed object is his everyday language. Together we chose a carbon-fibre filament for the outer shell: light, solid, with a technical character that is not troubled by time, temperature or wear.
But to be truly mine, this bag needed another pair of hands as well. My mum’s — a seamstress, who hand-stitches the inner faux-leather pouch, made to clip onto the shell. The rigour of the technology and the softness of the handwork are held together, literally, by magnets. When they meet you hear a click: that is the proof the join has really happened.
That is how M&IO was born: Morgana, Molly and Io — “Io” is Italian for “me”. Creation, because each bag is not a mass-produced product but a creation, and carries inside it the people who made it possible.
Her
The educator. She works every day with blind teenagers: that is where all of this started. She had the idea and she decides how it should be.
Him
The engineer. He draws the shell, the clasps and the tolerances, and remakes the part until the fit is the same every time.
Her mum
The seamstress. She cuts and hand-stitches every pouch, one at a time, and sets the magnets into the stitched edge.