Led by founder Charlotte Renner, Sinaya gives incarcerated Filipina women a fresh start through the art of beadwork.
She wasn’t a mermaid, but she searched the seas for art—not just golden frames or acrylic portraits hanging on royal ships, but something more. In the most unlikely places, she discovered her calling. Her name is Charlotte Renner, a Filipina entrepreneur who founded a beaded handbag business called Sinaya.
Named after the Filipino water deity Aman Sinaya, the brand goes beyond the typical monotone beaded bag. Instead, Sinaya pieces sparkle with whimsy and color: plaid, fringes, bows, and more, each bag crafted by the skilled hands of incarcerated women. For many of them, beadwork is both a source of livelihood and a way to create beauty within confinement.
“My whole thing is fun maximalism, but with a mission: to help end the cycle of incarceration for women here in the Philippines,” Charlotte explains.
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Meet Charlotte Renner
Charlotte Renner isn’t the type to sit still. Since childhood, she has moved through cities across the globe: Hong Kong, London, Paris, Shanghai, New York–you name it. Everywhere she went, her fashion followed, filling her wardrobe with bold boots and sparkling sequins. In time, she entered the fine art world, only to find the rigor of producing museum-grade work quite constraining. “I missed making art and designing without the pressure of it being ‘fine art,’” she recalls.
She needed something else, something new. Inspiration struck when Charlotte, living in New York at the time, went to the Philippines to visit family for Christmas. Walking down a festive market, with parols and Capiz angels strung from every corner, she came across a line of vibrant, hand-beaded bags. The designs weren’t exactly her style, but she saw the potential in the craftsmanship behind them. Wanting to collaborate with the artisans herself, she asked the seller who the beaders were, and was surprised to learn they were incarcerated women.
Women Deprived Of Liberty, Not Of Arts
Charlotte discovered that beading was taught in many local jails across the country, and it allowed incarcerated women to earn a living despite their circumstances, with all proceeds going to them. She first met these women at one of the prisons where her mother served as a judge for a beauty pageant. Seeing them under the dazzling lights, smiling with such confidence, something clicked for her. “They’re just a bunch of women […] trying to have fun under the circumstances,” she shares.
Despite how difficult it was to reach them and coordinate production, Charlotte was determined to partner with these women to create hand-crafted bags, knowing they were the right partners for the job—and that was how Sinaya came to be.
When she introduced her first barrel bag design, the process involved a great deal of trial and error before reaching the finish line. She sat down with her beaders to work through the challenges of its round shape, which required a technique that was new to many of them. Once ready, the artisans produced a sample, which typically takes around four days to create. Even then, Charlotte didn’t settle with the first few versions, opting to strive for quality over speed. All in all, it took weeks of in-person meetings conducted between security checks and metal bars to create a single bag.
What emerged from the design process were beautiful beaded creations that looked as though they could’ve been made of fabric. Sinaya would go on to debut the Bon Bon and Vivienne beaded barrel bags, both designs featuring striped and plaid patterns that had previously existed only in textiles—until now.
While the brand is gaining traction, Charlotte stresses that she couldn’t have done it without her team of skilled women. The prices of the bags are set by the beaders themselves, who also decide how many hours they work and what their wages should be, knowing they’re the reason for the bags’ quality. “I don’t want any of the money going to the prison itself,” Charlotte said, “I only want this money going directly to each beader so they can support their families.”
A Snapshot Of Sinaya
Sinaya is now a collection of beaded bags and trinkets that harkens back to the funky maximalism of childhood closets. The line includes early-2000s-inspired bags in neon colors and eccentric motifs, ranging from dolphins to teeth (yes, teeth!). These pieces feel like treasures a mermaid craving adventure might discover at the bottom of the sea, eliciting a sense of childlike wonder that Charlotte has always sought to capture.
“I get really attached to objects, because I’ve never really had a home,” she says. “So I apply a lot of emotional value to cutesy little objects that I can take with me. I think that’s why I make nostalgic designs from childhood, [but] for adults.”
Sinaya doesn’t have a physical store yet, but its pieces are available at several Filipino and US artisanal markets, including Artefino, Katutubo, Vintage Weekend, and more. Though the brand has been based in the Philippines since its inception, Charlotte shares that she’s excited to shift her base to the US and establish a more consistent presence there. She also recently launched Sinaya’s website, offering a limited stock of their handcrafted bags to reach customers wherever her journey leads.
But even if she finds herself on the other side of the globe, Charlotte hopes to remain close to her original beading team. She’s especially ecstatic to share that one of their beaders now works alongside her, having completed her sentence. And while there is still much to figure out for the future, Charlotte is determined to make it work—believing that when women uplift one another, they can transform not only their own lives, but also the communities around them.
Photos courtesy of Charlotte Renner and Sinaya’s IG and official website
