It’s 8 a.m. and a crowd of stylish younger ladies have swarmed a spot on West Houston and Sullivan Avenue in SoHo. However they’re not ready for the newest fro-yo craze or a Harry Kinds sighting. As a substitute, these cool downtown youngsters are ready for a 70-year-old Romanian immigrant named Peter Farkas.
A tall, burly man with the boundless power of a golden retriever, Farkas has been a leatherworker for over 50 years, and is answerable for items worn by the Hells Angels, Tony Soprano, and the Rolling Stones. Farkas even created Bruce Springsteen’s outfit for the 1987 hit “Tunnel of Love.”
However Farkas is getting a second shot at fame thanks younger consumers throughout town after going viral on TikTok in Could.
“I attempted to retire and this occurred,” the old-school New Yorker informed The Put up.
Whereas Peter has been promoting the ludicrously capacious luggage since his now-failed retirement plan, gross sales skyrocketed in a single day because of influencer Janell Roberts, who informed her 341,000 followers that Farkas’s luggage have been the secret standing merchandise of 2026.
“I’ve been wanting all over the place for this man and at last discovered him! Each bag is handmade and it’s hugeeeee and the bag is $35 bucks obsessed! #newbag his title is Peter he’s on Sullivan avenue in SoHo,” her caption on TikTok learn.
Roberts had been looking for Farkas for 4 months after first recognizing him within the fashionable downtown neighborhood earlier that yr.
Since Farkas’s social media debut, he’s been mobbed by consumers wanting to get the TikTok look. Every week, his daughters Jessica, Harley and Tana schlep as much as 500 luggage to SoHo’s St. Anthony Market or the UWS Grand Bazaar Market with strains across the nook.
This Friday, he and his daughters have been in SoHo with 4 tables piled excessive together with his signature bag as clients — and now followers — rummaged by means of them.
“That is my third time,” Could Ng, an e-commerce government, informed The Put up. “I want to finish the set. It’s like Labubu; I want all of them,” she mentioned, evaluating the luggage to final yr’s mania for the fuzzy monsters clipped on purses throughout town.
One other shopper exclaimed “OMG, inexperienced!” earlier than grabbing Farkas’s latest coloration manner. “I’ve been right here 5 occasions,” one comfortable shopper mentioned after lastly discovering the black authentic.
The preferred, nonetheless, stays the cobalt shade that influencer Roberts shared together with her followers — a coloration that consumers name “Janell Blue.”
As a result of the luggage are constructed from hand-dyed cow or deer leather-based at Peter’s tannery in upstate New York, colours at all times range, making a scavenger-hunt impact for the right hue. Costs vary from $35 to $50 — about 2.16% of a Louis Vuitton tote.
Practically 5 many years earlier than “the Peter luggage,” Farkas was a companion at Branded Leather-based, a Lengthy Island Metropolis tannery and leather-based manufacturing facility that manufacturing premium clothes and customized attire that created items for presidency companies, world-renowned entertainers, and even town’s greatest motorbike gangs, together with the Hells Angels, Pagans and the Purple Knights Worldwide Firefighters Bike Membership, often known as fireplace division.
“Everybody is aware of that I make them. Who else would?” Farkas informed The Put up.
He additionally made the primary pairs of leather-based pants bought by the legendary NYC classic and military surplus retailer, Canal Denims — although at first, Farkas was skeptical. “I mentioned, ‘Leather-based pants? Who’s going to purchase leather-based pants?’”
With the main focus now on the $35 Peter luggage, manufacturing has turn out to be a household affair. His three daughters are all on board, with Harley Farkas even quitting her retail job to assist arrange the primary official Branded Leather-based web site.
His son Evan additionally helps out behind the scenes with the web site and on-line orders, which hit about 100 to 200 luggage each week, based on Jessica.
However the true star of the present is the mild large, Peter Farkas himself. He will get stopped by almost each buyer hoping to get an opportunity to talk. “Thanks, Peter. Congratulations. It’s so good to see you,” one younger girl mentioned who purchased three luggage.
And don’t count on him to retire anytime quickly. He informed The Put up that due to his many years of experience, the luggage are super-simple for him to make, created for everybody and final perpetually.
“My father died on a Monday on the age of 100, and by no means retired. And neither will I, and that’s the way you keep alive,” Farkas mentioned.
