One of the hands-down toughest parts of working for yourself: You don’t always have people around to bounce ideas off of. Well, unless you’re Lia Cinquegrano, that is—when the New-Yorker-by-way-of-Florida started developing her bag line Thomas IV, which launched in 2011, she rounded up all those nearest, dearest, and most opinionated to give feedback. She calls this aesthetic inner circle her “Council of High Design” (jokingly!), and these are the members.Tommy Cinquegrano – “My brother is a computer animator who specializes in lighting for videogames. He also does these beautiful prints of what he calls collaged architecture. He’s really the harshest critic because he knows I can take it. He covers everything— color, design, silhouette, anything. He’s sent me really long emails with bullet points.”Bridget Cinquegrano – “My brother’s wife Bridget has very good taste—very clean and smart. She wears a lighter palette, a lot of grays and neutrals. She does visual merchandising, so she shops around.”Maia Wojcik – “Maia’s my roommate—I met her five years ago. She searches for designers, art directors, and creative directors for positions in the fashion industry—on a global level. She’s very fashion-y— sharp and modern with lots of black. She has my camel-and-black bucket bag from my first season.”Julia Sherman – “I met Julia in high school—we did the RISD pre-college program together and lived together in college. She’s a very smart artist and has always had an interesting sense of style. She’s really honest—I like the friends that I know I can trust to be honest because they care.”Cat Warner – “She and I met about four years ago at Nanette Lepore—and I met my boyfriend through Cat! She’s very, very colorful and has a quirky sense to the way she designs knitwear and the way she puts herself together. She has bright red hair, and she always has fun accessories and a good color story going on.” Oh, man. You do NOT want to miss Lia’s second Of a Kind edition. Get your eyeballs on these bags now…

The designer’s very first collection for spring 2011. So good, right?When Lia Cinquegrano was devising the aesthetic for what would eventually become her bag line Thomas IV, she had some basic ideas in mind. She knew that color would be involved, and that the shapes wouldn’t (couldn’t!) be over-complicated. But between those basic concepts and the pieces she unveiled this spring—made of vibrant fabrics set against rich leathers on unfussy-but-polished forms—there was a lot of dabbling. The New York designer gives us a look at the creations that came before the line.“I made this in college at RISD. I was just playing around with appliqués and with mixing materials.”“Then I made a few bags for my friend Scarlett’s sister about three or four years ago. I sent her a bunch of sketches, and she picked a few that she liked. For this one, I cut up used leather jackets and mixed them with canvas. This is before I understood the importance of proper interfacings. It’s a different story to have bags made by a factory—they’re just more finished.”“When I got a studio space in Williamsburg a year and a half ago, I really started working on my own stuff and developing ideas. I liked working with something that existed—starting with the printed leather that particular jacket was made out of and playing with existing seams to do patchwork. But it was really hard to find the right metallic printed skins. I couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for. So I left that by the wayside and started thinking more about the inherently more colorful Guatemalan fabric that I ended up using for my first collection.” Score Lia’s second Of a Kind edition! Her lastest (so-cool) bag comes in two rad color combos.