Artist and designer Nik Bentel says he was completely surprised by the reaction his “Pasta Bag” received last summer, when everyone on the Internet seemed to simultaneously decide that the Barilla-inspired crossbody bag was the must-have of the season.
“A few Twitter accounts had gotten ahold of some of the images that I was sharing to the press,” he told Food & Wine. “I had a link open for preorders and my phone started blowing up — I had to turn off the preorders or I wouldn’t have had enough bags for the actual launch a week later. When the bag launched, we sold out of all 100 bags in five to 10 minutes — it was just immediate. I think there were about 60,000 people on my website, which was amazing.”
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Bentel said the response to the leather bag was “humbling,” but, a lot of would-be Pasta Bag buyers were unable to get their hands on one. “I didn’t expect it to happen that way at all,” he said. “I was sitting by myself in my room and I was internally screaming to myself. It was really exciting, especially at 10 a.m. when you’ve barely had coffee.”
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The New York-based Bentel said that he felt like he had to create a sequel to the insanely successful bag, and his second Pasta Bag was released on nikolasbentelstudio.com and just like the OG version, this run of Pasta Bags is also limited to 100.
Photo | iStock
