For Randi Obenauer’s tough designs, it’s hot-rod ceiling foam and reclaimed leather.

Buying a school bag for its academic karma is a bit like studying by storing textbooks under your bed. But when the bag is as fresh as those in Randi Obenauer's new Ora line, the recently back-to-school should put their faith in her repurposed leather–and academically sharp hands. It couldn't hurt to hope a bit of her magic rubs off.

Six years ago, Obenauer whipped up her own gowns for her reign as Miss Logan Lake, B.C. Graduating from high school with scholarships aplenty, she sailed through a two-year fine-arts diploma at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, earned her ticket in automotive upholstery at Kwantlen University College, and graduated at the top of her class this June from Gastown's Helen LeFeaux School of Fashion Design. Now she's preparing to enter Capilano College's advanced textile-arts certificate program, with an entrance scholarship, of course.

"I didn't want to just go out and become a plumber," the astute 24-year-old, who knew she'd have to foot her post-secondary bill herself, told the Straight . "I wanted to take a skill I already had and make it industrial. I can't tell you the pride I felt to be 21 and have a trade. It [the certification] never goes away, I can do it from home, and I can do it with confidence as a female."

Obenauer's trades background is evident in her design. Her signature bags are kidney-shaped and quilted like the upholstery in a 1982 Ford Thunderbird. Sewn on an industrial machine in the dining room of her Mount Pleasant apartment, each one is crafted from leather reclaimed from a local furnituremaker and foam used on hot-rod ceilings. They appear deceptively small, and could easily shift from funky about-town accessory to luggage for a serious library stash, thanks to a tough, hand-braided lea­ther strap.

Bags, Obenauer believes, are just as important as shoes in pulling an outfit together. And like shoes, they remain sleek-looking even if they've been living under a bed amid Big Mac wrappers and other student-life flotsam. Though the price tag is $200 to $250, these bags (available at Twigg & Hottie [3671 Main Street) and the monthly Portobello West [www.portobello.west.com/]) are made to outlast dozens of vinyl mall sacks.

On August 25, she was a runner-up for the first Portobello West Graduate Award. (Other nominees are the Art Institute of Vancouver's Shaina Webb, of Shaina Webb Designs; Kwantlen's Carmen Merkel and Michelle Jerome, of Bad Apple Fashions; and Kwantlen's Anita Heiberg, of Freja Designs.)

Looking ahead, Randi is making her schooling pay by working for local production/manufacturing companies Kloth Designs and Precision Patterns.

She does custom work, which has included a collaboration with Kamloops-based artist Donald Lawrence for his 2006 exhibition at Vancouver's Contemporary Art Gallery. Cap College will be the last stop her adventurous school bus makes for a while; after five years, she is ready to establish her "fashion empire", she said. Her ultimate goal: to get her designs into Vogue .

"I have a huge student loan, but it doesn't scare me. I have absolute faith in my success, and I'm not stressed about it.…Here I go. Watch me fly."