Leather! All that beautiful leather!

Since a visit is planned for this Wednesday to Stefano Bemer, the famous men's bespoke shoe artisan, I thought I should leave all the photo till then and edit altogether. But anyway, I reckon this could be a good way to jot down all my mental notes from the day, at both tanneries Concerie Volpi and Caravel SPA, when questions and answers were flying everywhere... literally...
The vegetable tanning of cow skin, its usually used for bags such as Louis Vuitton's, where the color of the leather would gradually change and mature through time. Another way to see on the spot if its vegetable tanning or not is to rub it with your fingers slightly, the color should darken if its been tanned with vegetable extracts. The denser the extracts, the darker the leather will turn out to be. So firstly, the raw hinds are de-haired and treated with lemon and sufor, then washed to lower the PH level of the skin. It mostly probably will need to stay in the washing drums for a few days... (Raw hind could be salted and left in a certain temperature for 6 to 8 months, or even a year.)
 After this procedure, the leather will be separated for their different uses depending on the thickness and texture, or depending on the parts of the skins, either for shoe soles or bags. For both the fat left underneath the skin would be taken off. The difference comes with the pressing. Soles are pressed under extreme pressure. The pressing procedures are done before and after the drying of the leather. Now, the quality of the leather could only be determined after this point, checking for scratches, insect bites, damages of all sort. With Volpi Tannery, the leathers are then sorted into 3 grades, 1 ranking the highest. One way to disguised the bruises on the leather is to spray paint, the kind of characteristic we often see for women's shoe wear. Nonetheless, it does not mean that the leather beneath is necessarily of lower quality. If there are requirements for special coloring, it is done after the washing and before the final pressing.

For heaving metal tanning, it is usually done for reptile skins such as snake, crocodile, alligator etc. Especially with crocodiles and alligators since they have a much primal skin construction with layers that could not be penetrated with one procedure. Chrome is what was used at Caravel. Being one of the most prestigious and largest tanneries for exotic skins and owned by Gucci, Caravel supplies for many luxury brands, some leathers there in the making process were for Alexander McQueen and Bottega Venetta and many more. Its almost the same as the vegetable tanning with the washing, coloring, but of course without the pressing part. And for snake skins, to avoid them from scratching and damaging each other, they are folded and clip before hand so its the inner side facing outwards.

A salted skin of a wild crocodile of 7-8 years of age. And small farmed crocodile skin after the chrome tanning. They usually come out with a grey blue, which has to be bleached out afterwards.

Mountains of snake skin, then dried and either painted in silver or dyed in black...Elsewhere there are the colors of a thousand rainbows.

And I know I said I wanted to leave them till Stefano Bemer but I actually took no photos at his work shop or his ready-to-wear store. It felt personal in a way. His shoes were gorgeous to say the least.

So, this weekend has been planned for a trip to Naples, visiting Kiton and Isaia's factories there and then next Wednesday is for MICAM in Milan, which I am enormously excited about. I hope Georgina Goodman's stand there will grant an appointment since I have a special research project on their brand.... fingers crossed.

Darn... Almost forgot about La Scuola del Cuoio... the leather school!

From lamb, to deer, to cow, to snake, to crocodile... and to fake crocodile.... Hand made prints with gold leaves.

This is so random. Lol.

Time-Jam

Just managed to finish the book Fashion Brands - Branding Style from Armani to Zara. It was an interesting read but still I had a difficult time trying to finish it at top speed... for recently, I seem to run out of time to do anything. Right now, in a state of information overload again (its happening more often than ever), I though I should stop right there on page 3 of Luxury Fashion Branding, and do something else.
Hoping to squeeze as much information as possible into this head of mine and at the same time obtain as much inspirations as I can from my surroundings, also with an ambition to polish up my Italian, I'm caught in a very annoying situation: over ambitious, yet sleeping too much. I sleep at least 9 hours every day, I know, I'm wasting my life here, but otherwise I simply could not function properly. Say if I lacked a few hours of sleep from last week, I will for sure make up for it either I want to or not the following week. Its more or less like a code fixed into my whole being when God made me. Ok, getting too serious.... um so, anyway, time-jam, time-jam, too much to do , so little time...

I picked out a few photos from back in Auckland and Melbourne, a few of them with me in my sneakers (Gosh i miss my sneakers!! Florence grounds are killing my heels, literally, killing them!!).

A few of Nature Meets Civilization:

Again, through a veil:

Just out of curiosity, since I'm a rookie blogger, does Blogspot have all the related blogs in a row?? Because when I clicked again and again onto the "next blog" link, I see blogs of new mothers, blogs of new dads, of family blogs...etc. You get the idea... So... I mean.... COME ON!!! THIS IS NOT A SWEET-MOMMY-WITH-A-NEW-BORN-IN-A-BEAUTIFUL-FAMILY KIND OF BLOG!!! Maybe its just me being too sensitive....oh well.

Carnivale di Venezia

Venice has been a real treat after hours and hours of sit downs and sessions... It is as amazing as it should be, and maybe even a bit more because of the carnival these couple of weeks. To be honest, the people traffic was too much, people had to really shuffle along the tiny streets and bridges. Venice was not built to accommodate THIS  many people.
Since this was only a one-day opportunity, unfortunately I didn't get to see as many costumes as I would have liked to, but there are still a few that I really liked.

However compared to these stand-still poses, I prefer much better the ones in motion. The are more.. emotions and texture to it.

This orange lady here is by far my FAVORITE!!!!!!! XOXOXO I have already set her as my screen saver, my background and my album cover, haha. Love it.

Of course, when you are in Venice, or anywhere travelling in Italy, its inevitable that you take photos of your surroundings too. They are simply breathtaking.

I passed this little restaurant on the way to Piazza San Marco and this window display stopped me right in the middle of the street. Imagine all the people traffic and me being an idiot to dare take a moment to stand still to take a photo. But no matter what, I was determined to get a clear picture of it! Not to mention all the mask shops everywhere. Oh and I just had to take a photo of that woman's wig. Haha.

More visits

This past weekend has been a very productive one, went through the famous Uffizi, Piazza Pitti, and Florence's Chocolate Fair. But because I spent too much time in the Silver Museum of Piazza Pitti, the costume section closed before I could make it over there, which is a "pitti". So here I will post some pictures from these places and a few from the "old ages".
* I realized that every time I go through my old photos or files etc., I seem to see a different me, or other pieces of me is this big puzzle that seem to get lost every now and then. So if anyone really wants to get to know me, go through all my old photos first, if you know where to find them...
Uffizi, the place of great Christian and mythical inspirations.

Corners of the ceilings and the closets, cases, boxes that dominated them really fascinated me.

Especially this one right here, its a great example of Mosaic Minuto, a special technique for constructing mosaics with extremely tiny pieces of stones, gems etc.

Now lets move on to the Chocolate Fair, stunning:

Can you believe that these are actually made out of chocolates? And chocolates only?? And they taste good too!! I got myself a slice of cremino in 3 layers and also a cup of thick steamy hot chocolate. Despite that fact that that week I was coughing like crazy... the temptation was just toooo much. 

Finally a bit of a side track. The other day we went to see a renowned perfumer in Florence, whom was actually also known for his arrogance and bad temper. Somehow, he was in an extremely good mood or at least to us. He was detailed in answering inquiries and kind with compliments. At the end of the session, he offered all of us a little present bag with his products and samples.... Here it is! Isn't he wonderful??