I’ve never had a great impression of Matthew McConaughey’s gorgeous girlfriend, Camila Alves. She’s not your typical trophy girlfriend and she seems low key in her way, but she also has been promoting her purse line a lot and she seems a little haughty to me. Maybe that comes from years of being that damn pretty, the bitch.

Anyway Camila has had a high end handmade leather purse line out with her mother called Muxo and now she’s bringing it to the masses. She has a new photospread and interview in OK! to go along with the news that she’ll be selling her purses on QVC. I’m including one of the photos from OK! here with apologies to the OK! people. These were just too good to pass up and there are more photos in the print edition.

You came to the US just to visit from Brazil at 15 and didn’t speak any English. Wasn’t that scary?
I knew somehow I’d learn. It was more like an adventure! I got on the plane and said, “Mom, I don’t think I’m coming back.” It was a destiny kind of thing. I started modeling and stayed.

Your mom’s a designer and your partner in Muxo. Do you get your sense of style from her?
We have very different styles. She can get out there and I play it safe. We feed off each other. Yesterday we were creating a handbag for somebody. We go back and forth. Sometimes we argue, sometimes we laugh. It’s great.

How did you go from one-of-a-kind handmade couture bags to QVC?
We used to make the couture out of our garage. You have to hammer all those little rivets on the bag one by one. We’d have to deliver bags for the next day, so we’d do it all night. Handmade is expensive. We’d get letters that say, “I love your bags, but I can’t afford them.” People would offer to work for a bag. So we wanted to create something special and affordable.

What kind of woman do you design for?
All women. A lot of the bags are big: I’m on the go like a lot of women. I have my workout clothese in my bag, my laptop, my kids’ stuff. And I can still go to dinner or cocktails without going home to change.

Does Matthew give you feedback on the designs?
We’re a family. Everything we do, we do together.

Speaking of family, are you planning to have any more kids in the future?
I had two babies in three years, and my body is just now getting back to normal. So two for now is good.

[From OK! Magazine, print edition, April 11, 2011]

Here’s a link to Camila’s line for QVC. Her purses on QVC run from around $120 to $250 and they’re ok but aren’t standouts in opinion. I don’t like boho style particularly. Her designer handmade purses run around $1,000 and are much nicer of course. My favorite purse designers are Coach, B. Makowsky and Francesco Biasia, and Kaiser just got me a Eitienne Aigner purse that I love. So maybe I’m too conservative to like her purses, but the designer ones aren’t bad. Kaiser and I were conferring about this, and she said that she avoids purses with fringe and bows, which is pretty much my stance on it too.

That said, I haven’t really changed my opinion of her. If she wasn’t McConaughey’s partner we wouldn’t be hearing much about her purses and she certainly wouldn’t have them on QVC.

photo credit: WENN.com