Every origin story has a hero, and in Susan Korn’s, the hero weighs about eight pounds and answers, when he feels like it, to Pigeon. Korn is the designer behind Susan Alexandra, the accessories label whose beaded fruit purses and maximalist charm jewelry have become a shorthand for a certain joyful, anti-minimalist mood in fashion. But the brand very nearly didn’t happen, and the reason it did is a small, strong-willed rescue Chihuahua who once, on an ordinary walk, dragged his owner down a street she hadn’t planned to take.
That’s not a cute metaphor. It’s the literal sequence of events. And it’s a good reminder that the pets who reshape our lives rarely announce they’re doing it.
The dog who arrived by accident
Pigeon came into Korn’s life in June 2016, before there was a brand, before there were beaded bags, before any of it. It started, as these things do, on a whim: Korn signed up one midnight to foster a small dog, and woke up to an email asking whether she could take one the very next day. He was already on a plane from Los Angeles.
He’d come out of a kill shelter in Compton, so Korn had no idea what she was getting. The volunteer who’d flown him cross-country met her at a Greenpoint coffee shop, half-hoping to keep him herself. His name at the time was Samson. Korn, wary of ending up with a “yappy Chihuahua,” told herself she’d just hold onto him until someone else claimed him.
Then came the detour that named him. A friend was hosting an art benefit that day at the Wild Bird Fund, the New York organization that rescues and rehabilitates injured city wildlife, pigeons, squirrels, the odd chipmunk. Korn rushed uptown with the little dog in tow, and when she walked in, the fund’s director took one look and said he was just the size of one of their pigeons. The name stuck. A city dog, through and through.
The walk that started a brand
Here’s the part that turns a nice adoption story into a business origin story. When Pigeon entered her life, Korn wasn’t making the bags yet. He is, by her own account, one of the main reasons she started.
The two of them lived near the seam where Little Italy meets Chinatown, and Pigeon, small but relentlessly opinionated about his routes, tugged her one day onto a path they didn’t normally take. That detour brought her past a modest storefront where a woman sat crocheting with beads. That woman would become the maker behind Susan Alexandra’s bags. Korn is unambiguous about the causality: it happened because Pigeon pulled her there.
In the years since launching her line of eminently Instagrammable beaded handbags, Korn’s cheerfully loud purses, charms, and jewelry, decked out in everything from tiny dogs to martini glasses, have drawn a devoted following. Gigi Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski, Emma Chamberlain, and plenty of others have gravitated to her bright maximalism as an antidote to the beige minimalism that dominated trendy style for a decade. And at the center of that sensibility, half muse and half mascot, sits an eight-pound dog.
From necklaces on the dog to a line for dogs
Because Pigeon is, in Korn’s telling, her constant companion and eternal muse, it was probably inevitable that the brand’s aesthetic would find its way onto him. She’d dress him in necklaces for photo shoots, and at some point the obvious clicked: why not just make the dog jewelry for real? That’s how the collars and leashes came to be, sparkly, fabulous, unapologetically fun, and reliable compliment-magnets on any dog wearing one.
There’s a practical question that always follows a delicate-looking accessory, and Korn hears it constantly: is it durable? The honest answer is nuanced. The bags are built from a genuinely tough, waterproof material that stands up to real weight, which is exactly why the leap into leashes made sense, the same fabric that survives a stuffed handbag can survive a leash. But she’s frank about the limits. This is a “going-out” collar, she’ll tell you, made for looking spectacular, not for a mountain hike. For a small, mellow dog like Pigeon, it’s an everyday piece. For a big, powerful puller, she’d rather you treat it as occasion wear than risk anything, because, as she puts it, nothing is more precious than your dog’s life. When in doubt, don’t chance it.
Where a fashion icon likes to hang out
For all the celebrity and runway sparkle, Pigeon’s own tastes run gloriously ordinary. He is, above all, a creature of comfort with a documented weakness for plush carpeting, prone to steering his owner into any establishment with a soft rug so he can luxuriate on it. His ideal outings involve free treats and the freedom to come along, which he does, everywhere. Korn’s favorite version of a summer night is a low-key one: Pigeon on her lap at a neighborhood restaurant while she has dinner outdoors. The Lower East Side doesn’t offer much green space, but the two of them have their spots, small parks close to home where a city dog and his person can just sit and be.
The bigger point
It’s tempting to file this under charming coincidence, a designer whose dog happened to walk her past the right storefront. But there’s a truer read. Korn is someone whose entire creative language is about manufacturing and protecting joy, and it’s no accident that the same person is wholeheartedly a dog person, or that a rescue nobody else wanted became the through-line of her work and her days. Pigeon didn’t just inspire a collar collection. He redirected a walk, which redirected a career, which is about the most any eight-pound dog could ask to do. Adopt the small, strong-willed one, it turns out, and you never quite know where he’ll pull you.
