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Oct 31, 2024

E Ink shows off designer purses and color screens

If you’re going to pay thousands of dollars for a handbag, at least it should do something cool — like change colors. A new line of purses from the Belgian luxury goods maker Delvaux does just that,

If you’re going to pay thousands of dollars for a handbag, at least it should do something cool — like change colors.

A new line of purses from the Belgian luxury goods maker Delvaux does just that, with an assist from Billerica-based E Ink, best known for making the screens for Amazon’s popular Kindle e-book readers.

E Ink screens are one of the rare consumer electronics products made in Massachusetts. The technology was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and though parent company E Ink Holdings is based in Taiwan, most of its manufacturing happens in a plant in South Hadley.

E Ink’s original technology displayed only black-and-white images. But new versions of E Ink can now display an array of colors, suitable not just for electronic books, but also for digital touchscreen tables, retail price tags, advertising posters, and even automobiles that change color on command.

“We’re looking at bringing to designers the capability to introduce color changing, any color you want, into their products,” said Timothy O’Malley, associate vice president of E Ink’s US regional business unit.

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Strips of E Ink material, capable of displaying a variety of bright colors, have been woven into the leather latticework of several Delvaux handbags. A tiny battery and electronic controller inside the purse lets the owner switch the colored elements from one shade to another. As with the Kindle screens, the system only uses electrical power when the image changes. Switching from, say, red to gray requires a surge of electrons. But once the change is made, the color stays put with no further power needed. That’s why Kindles work so long on a single battery charge. The Delvaux purses will do the same.

At a glance, it’s hard to see why anybody would need such a contrivance. But it’s also hard to see why anybody would pay $3,000 for a handbag. That’s the price for one of these color-changing handbags, and by Delvaux standards it’s a bargain. The company, founded in 1829, charges up to $30,000 for its purses and people who can spend that much on a leather bag can afford to be whimsical.

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It was Delvaux who approached E Ink with the idea in 2022. That was the year E Ink teamed up with carmaker BMW to show off cars at CES, the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. The BMW concept car could transform its color in seconds, just the thing for a secret agent trying to escape surveillance.

Impressed designers at Delvaux asked if they could do something similar with handbags, and the two companies got to work. Prototypes of the color-shifting purses made their debut last month at Paris Fashion Week, and the reaction was promising.

“Our project demonstrates the drive to mix this extraordinary tech with our leather mastery and create outstanding bags, for real, daily use,” said Jean-Marc Loubier, chief executive of Delvaux.

“They brought in their buyers and their customer contacts and their influencers from all over the globe to Fashion Week — everybody comes to Fashion Week — to gauge the level of interest that they had in this,” O’Malley said, “and it was pretty darn high.” He said that Delvaux expects to begin selling the bags next year.

If a Delvaux purse is out of your league, Amazon will soon begin shipping its first Kindle reader with an E Ink color screen. Priced at $280, it’ll fit into even the cheapest handbag.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @GlobeTechLab.