Raffaella Iten Metzger: The founder of De Marquet
How a travel idea gave rise to a Swiss luxury brand with international appeal.
Das stilvolle Porträt der Designerin Raffaella Iten Metzger mit einer De Marquet Tasche vor urban verschwommenem Hintergrund verbindet moderne Eleganz mit hochwertigem Design und macht die exklusive Welt von BEYOND BY AMERICAN EXPRESS™ sichtbar. Im Magazin unterstreicht das Bild redaktionelle Inhalte zu kuratierten Marken, besonderen Shopping-Erlebnissen und attraktiven Vorteilen für Platinum Card Kundinnen und Kunden, die Qualität, Individualität und smarte Premium-Services schätzen.
Everything you need to know at a glance
The Bern-based entrepreneur founded De Marquet in 2020. The idea was conceived during business trips. Swiss design meets Italian craftsmanship. Platinum members currently enjoy an exclusive benefit.
From a business trip to her own handbag brand
Sometimes a business idea starts with an everyday problem. For Raffaella Iten Metzger, it was a bag.
On short business trips, the Swiss entrepreneur wanted to bring several bags: one for the day, one for the evening, and perhaps another for a different occasion. There simply wasn’t enough room in her carry-on luggage. So she developed a solution herself: the Night&Day Bag, a base that could be combined with different covers. The covers took up barely more space in her suitcase than a T-shirt.
“That was a very typical starting point for me: a concrete problem from my own everyday life for which I hadn’t found a solution. So I tried to develop one myself,” says Raffaella.
The Night&Day is no longer part of the current product line. However, the idea behind it laid the foundation for “De Marquet.”
Taking on something new once again
When Iten Metzger founded De Marquet, she was no longer a typical young entrepreneur. She had worked for many years in communications and advertising and later ran her own communications agency in Bern. In 2020, she embarked on a new chapter with the Signature Baby, which would go on to become De Marquet’s iconic model.
Despite her entrepreneurial experience, entering the fashion world was a risk. She had to familiarize herself with design, prototyping, materials, production, logistics, and quality control. At the same time, she was able to combine her creative side with her entrepreneurial experience.
“De Marquet” tells a family story
The name of her brand is also personal: “De Marquet” was the surname of Iten Metzger’s great-grandmother, a Viennese noblewoman with ties to the imperial court of Franz Joseph.
However, the founder attributes her aesthetic sensibility primarily to her father. In his free time, he painted in the Impressionist style and played the piano; his true career aspiration had been to become a stage designer. At home, he was constantly experimenting with fabrics, colors, and moods.
“I grew up with a very strong visual upbringing, without anyone ever really teaching me design,” says the founder. So when she later sought a name for her brand, she didn’t want anything contrived. “For me, ‘De Marquet’ had a wealth of heritage and history, yet at the same time it could become something completely new.”
Swiss design meets Italian craftsmanship
The “De Marquet” bags are designed in Bern and produced in small batches in Tuscany. Iten Metzger focuses on clean, geometric shapes, high functionality, and artisanal details that are often barely visible at first glance.
This includes, for example, the finishing of the leather edges. Using the so-called “tinto in costa” process, these are precisely cut and then built up, dyed, and sealed by hand in several stages.
Production runs are also deliberately kept small: a maximum of 40 pieces of each combination of model, leather type, and color are produced worldwide.
“For me, quality isn’t just about how a bag looks when it’s new. What matters is how it stands the test of time,” says Raffaella.
What does luxury mean?
For the founder, aesthetics and function are inseparable. A bag shouldn’t just look good – it should make its owner’s everyday life easier and be as versatile as possible.
“A beautiful bag that you no longer enjoy carrying after just a few weeks isn’t luxury to me,” she says. “Luxury also means that something is well-thought-out and makes your life easier.”
That’s why quality, time, and personal significance are what define luxury. “For me, true luxury is the combination of aesthetics and practicality for everyday use – when something is beautiful and, at the same time, works effortlessly.”
When your own brand suddenly appears in the Hamburg metro
Today, “De Marquet” has long since expanded beyond Switzerland: In addition to its home market in Switzerland, the brand is represented in Italy, France, the U.S., and the Middle East, among other places. Raffaella deliberately focuses on select retail locations: “It’s more important to me to be present in 30 key locations than in 300 stores where ‘De Marquet’ somehow doesn’t belong.”
Unexpected moments sometimes reveal that her bags have taken on a life of their own. Just recently, a friend sent her a photo from the Hamburg subway: it showed a woman she didn’t know carrying one of her bags.
“My heart just leaps in my chest,” she says enthusiastically.
For her, that’s precisely what makes a growing brand so special: when other women discover the products and carry them in their own way. “Then the brand no longer belongs just to me, but is interpreted by other women in their own way.”
“You should allow yourself to be a beginner again”
Raffaella Iten Metzger is still far from having reached her destination, however. Today, she measures success less by a specific number or status. “For me, the journey is clearly the destination, and I’m continuing on this path because I haven’t arrived yet.”
For anyone toying with the idea of starting something new, she advises not to wait for the perfect moment. That moment will probably never come anyway. A good idea alone isn’t enough, however: “Without hard work, nothing works at all.”
Above all, though, you have to be willing to leave the familiar behind and learn new things again. “You should allow yourself to be a beginner once more – even if you’ve already achieved a lot.”
Perhaps that’s exactly the story behind “De Marquet”: drawing on experience without letting it limit you – and staying curious enough to start all over again from scratch.
Frequently asked questions and answers
Founder and Creative Director of De Marquet.
It came from the desire for a versatile bag for business travel.
In select workshops in Tuscany.
