It’s 8 a.m. and a crowd of trendy young women have swarmed a spot on West Houston and Sullivan Street in SoHo. But they’re not waiting for the latest fro-yo craze or a Harry Styles sighting. Instead, these cool downtown kids are waiting for a 70-year-old Romanian immigrant named Peter Farkas.
A tall, burly man with the boundless energy of a golden retriever, Farkas has been a leatherworker for over 50 years, and is responsible for pieces worn by the Hells Angels, Tony Soprano, and the Rolling Stones. Farkas even created Bruce Springsteen’s outfit for the 1987 hit “Tunnel of Love.”
But Farkas is getting a second shot at fame thanks young shoppers across the city after going viral on TikTok in May.
“I tried to retire and this happened,” the old-school New Yorker told The Post.
While Peter has been selling the ludicrously capacious bags since his now-failed retirement plan, sales skyrocketed overnight thanks to influencer Janell Roberts, who told her 341,000 followers that Farkas’s bags were the secret status item of 2026.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for this man and finally found him! Every bag is handmade and it’s hugeeeee and the bag is $35 bucks obsessed! #newbag his name is Peter he’s on Sullivan street in SoHo,” her caption on TikTok read.
Roberts had been trying to find Farkas for four months after first spotting him in the stylish downtown neighborhood earlier that year.
Since Farkas’s social media debut, he’s been mobbed by shoppers eager to get the TikTok look. Each week, his daughters Jessica, Harley and Tana schlep up to 500 bags to SoHo’s St. Anthony Market or the UWS Grand Bazaar Market with lines around the corner.
This Friday, he and his daughters were in SoHo with four tables piled high with his signature bag as customers — and now fans — rummaged through them.
“This is my third time,” May Ng, an e-commerce executive, told The Post. “I need to complete the set. It’s like Labubu; I need them all,” she said, comparing the bags to last year’s mania for the fuzzy monsters clipped on handbags across the city.
Another shopper exclaimed “OMG, green!” before grabbing Farkas’s newest color way. “I’ve been here five times,” one happy shopper said after finally finding the black original.
The most popular, however, remains the cobalt shade that influencer Roberts shared with her followers — a color that shoppers call “Janell Blue.”
Because the bags are made from hand-dyed cow or deer leather at Peter’s tannery in upstate New York, colors always vary, creating a scavenger-hunt effect for the perfect hue. Prices range from $35 to $50 — about 2.16% of a Louis Vuitton tote.
Nearly five decades before “the Peter bags,” Farkas was a partner at Branded Leather, a Long Island City tannery and leather factory that manufacturing premium garments and custom apparel that created pieces for government agencies, world-renowned entertainers, and even the city’s biggest motorcycle gangs, including the Hells Angels, Pagans and the Red Knights International Firefighters Motorcycle Club, known as fire department.
“Everyone knows that I make them. Who else would?” Farkas told The Post.
He also made the first pairs of leather pants sold by the legendary NYC vintage and army surplus retailer, Canal Jeans — though at first, Farkas was skeptical. “I said, ‘Leather pants? Who’s going to buy leather pants?’”
With the focus now on the $35 Peter bags, production has become a family affair. His three daughters are all on board, with Harley Farkas even quitting her retail job to help set up the first official Branded Leather website.
His son Evan also helps out behind the scenes with the website and online orders, which hit about 100 to 200 bags every week, according to Jessica.
But the real star of the show is the gentle giant, Peter Farkas himself. He gets stopped by nearly every customer hoping to get a chance to chat. “Thank you, Peter. Congratulations. It’s so nice to see you,” one young woman said who bought three bags.
And don’t expect him to retire anytime soon. He told The Post that because of his decades of expertise, the bags are super-simple for him to make, created for everyone and last forever.
“My father died on a Monday at the age of 100, and never retired. And neither will I, and that’s how you stay alive,” Farkas said.
