Carmen Sol:they sold otherbrands' bags,then made their own
Carmen Sol Espejo and Sebastiano Di Bari spent a decade running luxury boutiques on the beaches of Punta Cana, selling designer labels to vacationers. Then they designed a rose-scented jelly tote for their own shelves, drawn up around 2016 and launched as its own label by 2018, and the store full of other people's brands quietly became a brand of its own.
Carmen Sol did not begin as a product. It began as a shop. In late 2005, Carmen Sol Espejo and Sebastiano Di Bari, partners in life and in business, opened a small luxury boutique on the white-sand beaches of Punta Cana, in the Dominican Republic. The idea was simple: vacationers wanted to shop the designer brands they loved without leaving the beach.
It worked almost immediately. The first store was busy enough that Di Bari left his corporate job in New York, where he had spent his career in finance for the luxury fashion world, and joined Espejo full time to build the thing out. Between 2006 and 2010 the two of them opened ten boutiques across Punta Cana and Casa de Campo, under the name Carmen Sol New York.
For ten years their whole business was selling everyone else's labels. The product that made them famous did not exist yet.
Running ten beach stores teaches you exactly what a beach shopper reaches for, and what is missing. Espejo and Di Bari kept noticing the same gap: there was no accessory made for the beach itself, something that could go from the sand to the pool to dinner, get wet, get sandy, and still look like luxury. So, around 2016, they decided to design it themselves.
The first piece was a jelly tote, molded in a soft, glossy material in vivid hues, scented with rose, and quietly built to be recyclable and vegan. It went onto their own shelves next to the designer labels they had been selling for a decade. It was the only thing in the store with their name on it, and it was the thing people started coming back for.
Building a label on one material in one category is a narrower bet than the resort glamour lets on.
The honest tension in Carmen Sol is the category itself. The jelly shoe is a fashion object that comes and goes in waves, beloved one decade, dismissed as a children's beach toy the next, and a brand staked entirely on jelly bags, sandals and totes lives or dies on where that wave is. It is also seasonal and resort-bound by nature: a bag designed to get wet at the pool is not a January purchase in most of the country. Espejo and Di Bari chose a vivid, single-material niche and then committed to it completely, which is the opposite of the safe move and the reason the brand has a clear identity at all.
The wave, for now, has come back to them. Jelly footwear returned hard as a fashion story in 2024, pulled up-market when The Row put a pair in its collection and the trade and style press followed, NYLON and Who What Wear among them. That is validation and a warning in the same breath. A category that can roar back can also recede, and the work for a niche brand is to be the name people trust when the trend is hot and the one they keep when it cools.
What changed when the shop started making its own product.
A bag you can drop in the sand, rinse off, and wear to dinner. That is a harder thing to design than it sounds.
Carmen Sol settled into a clear identity: designed in New York, made in Italy, resort-inspired and what they call affordable luxury with an eco-chic point of view. The line grew from that first tote into purses, totes, swimwear and jelly shoes, all in the same rose-scented, vividly colored material. Some of the bags are named after the founders themselves, including the Seba tote, named for Di Bari.
The brand spread the way resort brands do, by being seen. Carmen Sol bags turned up on Jennifer Lopez and a long list of others, and the company opened its own Jelly Box shops from Palm Beach to Milan. But the engine underneath the glamour stayed the same as the original boutique: know exactly what the customer on the beach actually wants, then hand it to them.
The bag with the founder's name on it
The Seba tote, a studded jelly tote in glossy, rose-scented material, named after co-founder Sebastiano Di Bari. It is the clearest expression of the whole brand: a beach bag built like a luxury accessory, made in Italy, designed to get wet and still look expensive. The thing the shop full of other brands was always missing.
Carmen Sol, in five moments
The arc
- 2005Carmen Sol Espejo and Sebastiano Di Bari open a small luxury boutique on the beaches of Punta Cana, selling designer brands to vacationers.
- The leapThe first store does well enough that Di Bari leaves his finance career in New York to build the business out full time with Espejo.
- 2006 to 2010The two grow Carmen Sol New York to ten boutiques across Punta Cana and Casa de Campo, still selling other people's labels.
- 2016 to 2018They design their own rose-scented jelly tote for their shelves, made in Italy, drawn up around 2016 and launched as the namesake label by 2018.
- TodayCarmen Sol is a made-in-Italy resort brand of bags, shoes and swim, sold direct on Shopify and in its own Jelly Box shops from Palm Beach to Milan.
What protects a one-category brand from the swing of the trend is the thing Espejo and Di Bari built before they ever made a bag. Ten years behind the counter taught them exactly what a beach shopper reaches for, so when they finally made their own product it was not a guess, it was the answer to a question they had been hearing for a decade. The jelly wave will rise and fall on its own schedule. The advantage that does not move is twenty years of knowing this customer better than anyone selling to her, and a name she comes back for whether or not the runway agrees that summer.
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