Designer bags, as most females will concur, are now the foundation of the luxury brand business. Dana Thomas in her recent book Deluxe: How Luxury Lost it's Lustre points out that more than anything else, a handbag tells the story of a woman . . . her hopes and dreams . . . and that clever marketing by luxury brand companies has ensures that this handbag can change every few months. According to Thomas, women buy on average four handbags a year, some of them in the region of several hundred, some of them a few thousand. Muiccia Prada says that it's easier to choose a bag than a dress because customers don't have to face problems like weight or age. Karl Lagerfeld, who maintains that everyone can afford a luxury bag, says that they "make your life more pleasant, make you dream, give you confidence, and show your neighbours you are doing well". It's a massively competitive industry as one 'It' bag usurps another with alarming frequency but Sweeney's currency is high. Go to Liberty's on London's Regent Street for example, and you'll find Pauric Sweeney Bags displayed centre stage, surrounded by Marc Jacobs, Balenciaga and Chloe et al. The brand is stocked worldwide, from Tokyo to Moscow (and in Harvey Nichols, Dundrum Town Centre in Ireland). Influential online store Net-a-porter ranked his Silver Siren Overnight bag as one of the must-buy bags for this autumn/winter and he's regularly featured in Vogue.

He also has a suitably impressive celebrity following.

Madonna, as well as Roisin Murphy of Moloko have long been fans and when Lindsay Lohan was packed off for her stint in rehab, she shielded her face from the paparazzi with a Pauric Sweeney bag, which retails in the region of $3,800 and of which she has several. But the celebrity affirmation can go either way . . . Colleen McLoughlin has been known to kill an 'It' bag dead in the water by her appropriation of one. Has he found such endorsement to be a help or a hindrance? "Ah, I think it's all good, you know?" Sweeney says. "If you don't like the type of woman carrying the bag, then it might be a problem but I think they're great, great ladies." Lohan's rehab bag is probably his bestseller and that can't but be linked to the publicity but he says it's hard to know exactly how that kind of thinking will have an effect. "If you're a big company, maybe you're able to quantify the repercussions of something like that, but I think it can only help if it is the right kind of person."

The 34-year-old is Donegal born (Falcarragh) and Blackrock College-raised. Having cut his architectural studies short in Philadelphia, his initial point of entry into jewellery design, moving to London, where he opened up a studio and gallery space called Root in Brick Lane with his then-girlfriend Ali Carey, who now works for Prada. Fashion design came next and he showed his first collection in the Louvre, Paris, in 2000, which received critical praise. Then in 2005, he relocated to Florence, a decision propelled by a meeting with Bernard Arnault of the massive luxury conglomerate LVMH (its brands include Gucci, Marc Jacobs, Moet et Chandon and Fendi to name but a few) to discuss the possibility of doing a collection for them. "Basically, in those meetings I had you needed to have the whole package of knowing the tanneries and knowing the factories and I didn't have those relationships, " he explains. "Six months later, I went to Florence one night for a party and I just thought I liked it and it made total sense. I also thought it was time to move from London. I'd been there for eight years and my partner was pregnant."

Sweeney's business there is based out of a 17th century palazzo and he finds it beautiful but not necessarily stimulating.

"It's very small, very provincial. It's fine for a visit but there's no sort of contemporary art scene or creative scene. There are in pockets but it's not something you can feed off the same way you would in east London, where everyone is creative, everyone is liberal and everyone's got interesting progressive ideas, " he says. "But at the same time I'm in it to learn the craft of bag making and build up relationships with the factories and the tanneries and figure out how the whole process works." It's taken a while to develop these contacts ("It's very hard to get things done there and to deal with Italians, you need to have patience like there's no tomorrow").

In any case he doesn't spend vast amounts of time here because he travels. A lot. Since leaving Florence on 8 August, he went to Hong Kong, then to China, Tokyo, Seoul, back to Tokyo, then Hong Kong again, onto Paris, then New York, Rome, Milan and Florence. Then it was New York Fashion Week, followed by Milan Fashion week, then a pit-stop in Dublin. Next up is Paris, where he's just opened a new office although he'll keep his base in Italy and go back there for one week a month. He says that he spends a lot of money on hotel suites.

Sweeney's own take on why so many women are prostrate on the altar of luxury bags is partly due to the emergence of the high street getting the seal of approval by celebrities. "I think that that's really fuelled the market for luxury bags because you can get away with it . . . it's now cool to wear a Top Shop t-shirt and carry a three grand bag." He also points to the Middle East and India as being interesting areas of growth. "I spent the last couple of days with the editor of Vogue India and they can still wear saris but carry the latest Chloe bag, so it knows no boundaries." In terms of his own success, he says buyers in stores are responding really well to his collections and that in contrast to the typical famous names, to which there's been a backlash, his bags aren't over-branded and appeal to the more discerning customer. He likens the business to the music industry to an extent. "The customer needs to 'discover' it and they're smart enough to know what they like."

For the uninitiated what does the process of designing a bag entail? "How I work and how I've worked over the last few seasons is I'll always do little bits of sketches. I keep it fairly open and start with the materials, textures, colours. It depends on the collection, " he says. "With clothing, it's quite different because there's a theme you can build upon. With bags, the emphasis is on craftsmanship and how things are done . . . having a balance and a reverence to the history of Florence but then having an edgy element and creating something that's a little bit off the wall."

As to whether his architectural training has influenced him, he says, "It's a creative discipline. I think regardless of whether you're making music, designing clothes, doing a bag, there are certain fundamentals and similarities that you follow in a very loose way."

Sweeney's interests are eclectic ranging from the movies of Fellini to the music of Voltaire, and, somewhat surprisingly, gardening. Music is a major influence . . . he says it's probably one of the most important attributes to his work as a creator.

It all comes out in the collections, which are invariably edgy and that little bit off the wall. The current one has 110 pieces and is bold, colourful, futuristic and eclectic and extremely nice indeed. There's lots of python . . . which animal rights activists clearly wouldn't approve of . . . but he says it's not necessarily his favourite material to work with.

He says he could . . . possibly . . . return to Ireland one day, although he doesn't think it's very likely. He does keep a house in Wexford however, where his mother lives, and comes back Dublin every couple of months. For all the travelling and high pressure meetings with clients, a lot of what he does sounds fun and is peppered with some of fashion's in crowd. He's in talks with Jefferson Hack, publisher and Kate Moss ex, to bring hipster mag Dazed and Confused to India and has just spent Milan Fashion Week with Matthew Williamson, going from show to show in his chauffeured limo.

Next up for Sweeney is a deal in Japan that will see him opening 13 stores there, which he's also designing. So does that mean that he's very rich? No, he says but richer than he's been before.

Would he ever sell the brand? He likes the responsibility and building the company so that would depend on a lot of things, of course, including the money. What other brands does he admire? Lots for different reasons . . . Hermes, Prada, Balenciaga, luggage by Goyard. Does he speak Italian? Very little, but a lot of people in Florence are bilingual. Does he have a nice life in Tuscany? Yes, he says he does but finds that running a company that has such growth requires extra energy to get things done at the pace he'd normally expect them to be done. Are Fashion Weeks hugely stressful? He loves it he said and it's a great time of year with good meetings with clients who believe in the product and good parities. But it can be stressful if you're not prepared. "But that hasn't happened yet."

BAG LADIES: THE MOST COVETABLE SWEENEY BAGS FOR THIS SEASON. . . AND NEXT

Clutch bags from Spring/Summer 2008.
/700 - /1750
"These colourful bags are inspired by the Italian academic design movement in the 1980s called Memphis Large Hard Ryder (Hobo) in quilted leather and python clasp,
/1450"This is an old Arabic pattern I found and converted into leather quilting Overnight 7 (The Debbie) in black 'sheen' leather,
/890"This bag was inspired by a leather jacket worn by Debbie Harrry at CBGB in New York Star Trek bags from Spring/Summer 2008.