A Greek Brand Maintains Its Traditional Touch

Since its 2013 founding, the Callista company has made its bags and small leather goods by hand.

Although people start businesses for all sorts of reasons, patriotic fervor is usually not one of them. Yet the leather goods company Callista is an exception.

Celia Sigalou, its chief executive and co-founder, recalled the brand’s start in 2013, during Greece’s economic crisis: “We said, ‘Let’s do something ——”

“For our country,” Eleni Konstantinidou, the company’s president and co-founder, said, finishing the sentence of her business partner, who is also her sister-in-law.

Greece had been struggling through another year of financial problems, trying to cope with austerity measures, mass layoffs and riots. Personal budgets were tight, especially when it came to luxury purchases. “All the high-end brands were difficult for people to afford,” Ms. Konstantinidou, 57, said during a joint interview.

Ms. Sigalou, left, and Eleni Konstantinidou, who founded Callista together in 2013 to make what Ms. Konstantinidou called “a good-quality, affordable luxury handbag.”Maria Mavropoulou for The New York Times

Neither woman had a fashion background: Ms. Konstantinidou was a marketing specialist, working for her husband’s architectural firm, and Ms. Sigalou was a civil engineer. “We’re not 100 percent fashion,” Ms. Konstantinidou said, “but we do follow the trends.”