Designer adds a store to her clutch

British handbag designer Lulu Guinness is having the kind of euphoric interlude that comes with being new to this sun- and star-filled city. “I want to live here,” she says in her high-pitched, high-class English accent. “Everyone is so charming!” Wearing a vintage black lace cocktail dress, she is standing near a shelf of satin shoes while a party celebrating the opening of her first West Coast shop is swirling around her. Her eponymous boutique, on West 3rd Street in L.A., is a gem, with a black-and-white striped awning not unlike the one found on Guinness’ cottage-shaped purse.

Lucky magazine hosted the soiree where guests -- including Sarah Wynter, Shiva Rose and Tamara Beckwith -- sported the designer’s witty bags and shoes. The starlets pale in comparison with the ultra-glamorous Guinness, who has parlayed her own brand of pin-curled, red-lipsticked, movie-star looks into a line of bags so refreshingly distinct that several have landed in the permanent collection of London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.

Perhaps her best-known bag and one of those picked for museum posterity is “the florist basket,” a black satin bag topped with a bouquet of red roses. She is also known for the delicately beaded fan clutches that have been red-carpet hits with Elizabeth Hurley, Trudie Styler and Rachel Griffiths. (A special fan purse, which can be dyed to match any dress, will be available for Academy Award dressing consideration.)

For daytime, totes and pouches are emblazoned with jaunty embroideries of stilettos, powder puffs, pearl necklaces and other girl props, and sayings such as “You Can Never Have Too Many” and “Be a Glamour Girl -- Put on Your Lipstick.” Other designs, including an evening purse shaped like a glittery fairy-tale castle or like a box of chocolates, are collected by customers who come to personal appearances insisting that the designer sign her creations.

Guinness’ purses (which range from $35 for a makeup roll to $995 for a fan bag) are sold in more than 800 stores in the U.S., including Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom, and the designer has shops in London and New York, and plans to open one soon in Tokyo. . This fall, she introduced a line of vintage-inspired footwear -- red patent-leather Mary Janes, round-toed 1940s satin dance shoes and 1950s wedge-heeled espadrilles. She also designs umbrellas, socks and travel accessories.

The daughter of a banker, Guinness grew up in the countryside outside London and in South Africa, where she studied graphic arts at Capetown University. A self-described late bloomer, she didn’t design her first bag until 1989 at age 29, fashioning a briefcase with see-through plastic panels to show off gadgets such as Sony Walkmans and Filofaxes. “It was meant to make me my fortune,” she says saucily in her store the day after the party, where the floor is still sticky from spilled vodka drinks. Today, she is dressed in a flower print Marni dress and a cream crochet cardigan that belonged to her “granny.”

When a trio of London stores -- Browns, Joseph and Liberty -- picked up the briefcases, Guinness found herself “bitten by the fashion bug,” she says. At first, like many designers, she tried to be all things to all people. But gradually, she gained the confidence to do her thing, creating ladylike bags in fuchsia and magenta suede. “Nobody did color back then,” she says, leaning forward to light a cigarette.

Nowadays, not only does every hot fashion house have a handbag (Balenciaga, YSL, Celine), but there is also a crop of entrepreneurs -- such as the exceedingly popular Kate Spade of New York; Jennifer Tash and Trang Huynh of L.A.’s Isabella Fiore; and London’s Anya Hindmarch -- who have brought attention and a new sense of wit to handbag design.

As her business grew, Guinness incorporated her own old-style glamour, developed during a lifetime of shopping the vintage clothing stalls of Portobello Road, into her work. She used her graphic arts background to create whimsical drawings inspired by vintage fashion illustrations, which she collects. (The floor of her flagship store in London, just off Sloane Square, is papered in covers from 1950s French Vogue.) She even drew the self-portrait that will adorn the bottles when she launches her lily-of-the-valley scent this spring.

Though many people assume that Guinness is an heiress (which trumps being an actress any day), she married into the family of frothy stout fame. Her husband, Valentine, is the grandson of British statesman Walter Edward Guinness -- Lord Moyne -- who was assassinated in Cairo in 1944 by two members of the famous “Stern Gang,” a group that fought for Israeli statehood.

She met Valentine, a playwright and rock musician, in 1980 when she showed up at a recording studio with her friend to sing backup for his glam rock band, Darling.

When asked about her husband’s family, she demurs, saying, “There’s a lot of Guinnesses and some of them are extremely rich. But not all of them are.”

Married in 1987, the Guinnesses live in Notting Hill with daughters Tara, 11, and Madeleine, 6. Resisting the urge to stay through the weekend and explore the Rose Bowl flea market, she’s headed back to London in a few hours for Madeleine’s school Nativity play.

But already she’s dreaming of her next trip to L.A. “I would love to live near the beach,” she says. There’s also Charleston, S.C. She’s had a lifelong fantasy of living in the American South. In truth, it’s all of the U.S. that she can’t get enough of. “I always enjoy myself here,” Guinness says. “I like the feeling that everything is possible.”