The first thing I notice when I pick up a piece of leather is its suppleness. Not just softness. Suppleness.
The way it moves in the hand, it has to carry a certain balance, soft but still weighty, something that feels alive but grounded at the same time.
Over time you begin to recognise when a piece is special. It’s usually a combination of things. The texture, the weight, the finish, and how close the leather still feels to its natural state. I’m always drawn to materials that retain something of their origin but have just enough refinement to bring them into another world.
What excites me most is when everything comes together perfectly. The right shade, the right maturity in the colour, the depth of it. Sometimes it’s also when leather has been treated or transformed in an unusual way. Warped slightly, manipulated creatively, pushed somewhere unexpected but still elegant: those moments are always exciting.
Working with reclaimed leather adds another layer to that study. You’re not only looking at the material itself, you’re also thinking about how it will live with other materials. Sometimes we re-fabricate pieces of leather together, building something entirely new from what already exists. So I’m always testing the material in my mind. How will it wear? How will it take pressure? How will it respond to heat? How will it age?
Not every beautiful leather survives that test. Occasionally something looks perfect but simply doesn’t have the strength or the character needed to endure. When that happens it has to be rejected, there’s no point otherwise. But if a piece is truly beautiful in its own way, even if I don’t yet know what it will become, I usually keep it.
It might not turn into a bag. It might become something else entirely one day.
Leather has taught me something deeper over the years.
It feels like a material that runs alongside humanity. It carries life within it...The life of the animal that once held it. Then another life when the skin is prepared. Then another when it becomes an object. And then another when someone begins to live with it.
In that sense, leather almost feels sacred. Something living has left something behind, and your role as a maker is to honour that continuation.
Working with reclaimed leather makes that responsibility even clearer. It forces you to think differently, and asks you to be inventive without being wasteful. It’s an exercise in restraint as much as creativity.
How do you take something that already exists and give it another life?
How do you work with the same material again and again and still create something new?
You stay within certain parameters, and inside those parameters, you can travel very far.
Zainab Ashadu