About Us
Lea Karp has been the owner of CBL LA for over 25 years and her daughter Rachel Karp has been managing CBL’s ecomm and social media for the past 5 years now.
From a young age Lea cultivated a unique sense of style through her love of thrift shopping and working in the heart of the Los Angeles fashion district. After 10 years of working in The Mart, Lea decided to pursue her dream of opening her own shop. She started buying and selling handbags out of her home and car, making local home deliveries, setting up kiosks at house parties, and events in the greater Los Angeles area.
Lea passed on her unique sense of style to Rachel who from a young age also loved to thrift shop and rework (cut up) Lea’s clothing and wear them. Rachel continued to pursue her love of fashion in New York City, where she studied at Parsons the New School for Design, earning a degree in Integrated Fashion Design and Culture + Media.
Today you can find Lea still selling her bags and supporting the causes of reputable charity leagues and non profit organizations. And when she’s not schlepping her bags from residential homes, to school boutiques, or charity organizations; her merchandise occupies a quaint cottage store in Sherman Oaks. While Lea is out supporting her customers in the real world, Rachel handles all things online and connects CBL with the instagram community.
Lea and Rachel come together for road trips and love traveling to out of state tradeshows and showcases. Please check our Events Calendar to see if we will be in your city, or contact us if you would like to host a house party! We give all of our hosts a percentage of our sales, or donate a percentage to a charity of your choosing.
Welcome to the Classy Bag Lady. It is here that Lea’s loyal and ever expanding base of customers return not just for her selection of designer handbags, but also for her warm hearted and dedicated customer service. With a range of quality leather, vegan, colorful, modern, or vintage styles from independent to high end designer brand labels; Lea has a bag for everyone and she will go above and beyond to find something for each customer to covet in her well-honed collection of Classy handbags.