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.