L.A.’s Coolest Rug Dealer Is Turning Antique Carpets Into Bespoke Bags
King Kennedy Rugs owner Mikael Kennedy treats his inventory with a unique mixture of reverence and irreverence. The photographer-turned-rug dealer, who opened a Los Angeles showroom in 2020, is deeply knowledgeable of and respectful toward the late 19th and early 20th century Persian and Armenian rugs that largely constitute his enviable collection. At the same time, he’s capable of seeing them as something more.
Over the years, he’s transformed well-loved rugs into everything from mules to bomber jackets to tactical vests. But his latest endeavor is on another scale: a one-of-a-kind duffel bag made from an individual rug to the customer’s own specifications. Its name? The King.
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“If I’m going to produce something, I want it to be unique and I want it to stop people in their tracks,” Kennedy says of the bespoke offering, which he spent two years developing. “There’s enough junk in the world. I’m not producing to produce.”
While a handful of readymade bags are available for purchase on the maker’s website, the King Duffle program is meant to be a custom experience, starting at $3,800 but ultimately priced by whichever rug the client wants to see transformed. While Kennedy’s entire inventory of nearly 150 antique rugs can be viewed online, not every piece is eligible to be cut. Some will simply not compute because of their size or thickness, whereas three categories—Navajo rugs, Afghan war rugs and prayer rugs—are exempted by Kennedy based on what he calls his “old punk rock morality.”
“I think they’re really important cultural objects… there’s a reverence and understanding you have to have in a Western culture collecting and displaying these things,” he says of the rugs best left as rugs.
Once a client’s settled on, say, a 7’ by 3” Kazak rug from the late 1800s, they will then have the chance to select the eventual bag’s hardware—gold or brass—and choose from over 100 shades of Italian leather for the handles and trim. While Kennedy won’t begrudge any clients for playing it safe with tobacco brown or black, he’s also hoping that some will let their freak flags fly.
“I grew up in Vermont, and these Persian rugs are tied to a kind of waspy old New England, and there’s a classic-ness to it,” he tells Robb Report. “Coming from my work with a lot of the early menswear brands, there’s a wildness that I’m attempting to inject into this.”
Finally, each bag will be finished with a 12” interior zipped pocket and lined by poly-blend fabric printed with a psychedelic camouflage Kennedy calls “King Kennedy camo,” “Which is when your clothes blend into the rug,” he says by way of explanation.
On the maker’s website, the King Duffle is touted as part of a “new Bespoke program,” which invites the natural question: what’s next? Kennedy doesn’t have a concrete answer now, and that’s just the way he likes it.
“When I say there’s no plan, there’s really not a plan. It’s more just a thread that I’m following. I may see something tomorrow and think, ‘Oh, that’s incredible, I want to try and make that out of rugs’, and we’ll just jump into it.”
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