Lindy McDonough started her brand, Lindquist (the full version of her Swedish middle name), with a rule about glue. It had to be high quality, holding together the layers of her unique bags, but also free of VOC—a toxic compound used by most leather bag brands—and all other toxins. The rule was a non-starter because it’s both a nexus and metaphor for the brand's ethos.
In 2020, McDonough started Lindquist with her husband, Conor MacKean, a mechanical engineer, and Kate Gronner, head of production, in a small factory in Providence, Rhode Island. “We had dreams—we still have big dreams—about what we wanted to do, but we wanted to do it the right way,” she tells Vogue. The right way meant ethically handmade bags created by a team that earns competitive wages, with full healthcare and benefits. It also means no toxic dyes, no waste, and only high-quality, vegetable-tanned leather. “[We thought] if we make a beautiful thing and treat people well, it will work,” she says of the beginning stages. custom leather bag makers
McDonough’s father was a designer, so she caught the creative fashion bug at a young age. In her 20s and at the height of the 2008 recession, she moved to New York City and started a job at Brooklyn’s iconic Bird boutique, where she says she learned about the business from its founder, Jennifer Mankins. After a loss in her family, she moved back to Rhode Island, where she is from, and went to college to work as Creative Director for Lotuff Leather, where she was right before launching.
Her experience shows through in Lindquist bags. They all have a uniqueness in design, quality, and color. The leather is full-grain Vachetta leather from Brazil, finished using natural vegetable tanning at a tannery with no chrome at all. The threads are high quality and shipped in from the oldest maker in France, and the edges are all traditional burnish edges that are hand-sanded and painted. Many of the bags feature a soft circular shape and come in colors like mustard or turquoise, which are handpainted by a team member. Everyone who works for the brand, whether they are doing customer service or design, works on the factory floor as well. Their initials are sewn into every single bag, highlighting to the buyer how many people touched their product in the assembly process before it gets to them. They are for McDonough, the glue of all operations.
“Everyone that works here is a craftsman. I think it’s one of those things that really makes a difference. It's not this or that; it's both. And that's important,” she explains.
The factory is bright and spacious, with big windows that line the walls—a sort of idyllic version of what United States textile manufacturing could be. And for McDonough, that is the point. Bringing quality work akin to a household name luxury brand to the United States at fair price points is something she thinks about as the future of fashion, one that is thoughtful, small, and always considering the holistic picture.
“I want it to be a beautiful piece that someone can save up for and not feel a season later embarrassed,” she says. “I didn't want to make something that's limited, just to be limited but limited because we literally can't make that many of them. And something that someone can save for a long time and buy it and still feel happy with it.”
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