About Peggy

Luxury Handbags & Accessories

Paris

Peggy Laurence was born in Mulhouse, France but internationally educated when she moved at 3yrs old with her family to Republic Democratic of Congo where her father was the CEO of a textile manufacture. She has also lived in Lebanon, Spain, Italy and the US, New York. She now resides in Paris, France.

Peggy’s sense of fashion came early surrounded by colors and patterns of African textiles from her father’s work and by the elegance of her mother who designed and had reproduce her own clothes for social events.

When her parents divorced, Peggy, then a teenager and her sister moved with her mother to Alicante, Spain. Always a dreamer, Peggy spent mostly her math classes looking at the birds through the windows or sketching fashionable clothing with matching accessories, which made her mother being called many times to the principal office of her school. Her mother opened a boutique and decided to reproduce some designs, which were very successful. After graduating from school, Peggy decided to make her passion a career; her mother agreed to send her to fashion school but first had to go through a business school.

After graduating from marketing and management at the business school Idrac in Paris, France, she moved to Milan, Italy to enroll at Ars Sutoria an elite footwear design school. Just after school, she started collaborating with upscale Italians shoes manufacturers. In 1994, she decided to create the label Sophie Garel Couture. She began by making evening shoes, some with matching bags and then widened the collections with elegant styles for day and formal wear. Sold in leading department stores and boutiques as Bergdorf Goodman, Nordstrom, Fred Hayman, The Mirage in Las Vegas, Ultimo Dallas ect, Sophie Garel shoes have been featured in several fashion magazines in the U.S. as well as Italy as ELLE, ALLURE, W, MADEMOISELLE, ESSENCE, FN, WWD, ARS, DONNA, BRIDE'S, THE NEW YORK TIMES, COSMOPOLITAN, BERGDORF GOODMAN CATALOG, NORDSTROM CATALOG, ect...As well as in some TV shows as Entertainment Tonight (Mary Hart), Jay Leno (Cindy Grawford), ect…

Laurence won an award in Italy published by Donna magazine and was a featured designer in an Absolut Vodka 1991 calendar ad with a complete outfit including hat and boots in the shape of a vodka bottle. Sophie Garel's shoes have participated in the 1997 Oscar Fashion Preview for the Academy Awards coordinated and hosted by Fred Hayman in Beverly Hills (CA), as well as collaborating with several fashion designers for their shows as Pamela Dennis, Zang Toi, Robert Dane and Katsumi & Malcom. They have also participated in several charities for the breast cancer at FANNY's silent auction and Love Heals, the Alison Gertz Foundation annual Ribbon Benefit.

Her accomplishments include the design of accessories from the home as decorative hand-made pillows and “The Flower Egg” a kitchen tool.

Peggy is graduated from Idrac Paris, France and Ars Sutoria Milan, Italy. She attended school at Cours Descartes (Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo) and at the Lycée

Français (Alicante and Madrid, Spain).

Peggy is fluent in French, English, Italian and Spanish.