Up and Coming

Each year we anticipate the arrival of the next “It Bag” to the shelves of our favorite department store. We scan runway slideshows on style.com in search of it, we join waiting lists, bribe our sales associates to bump us up that same list, all to be the first to parade these pochettes and satchels with an air of authority and avant garde. We’ll shell out the $1500 + it costs just to be ahead of the curve, but do most of us really understand why?

Husbands, friends, accountants, the rest of society who don’t consider having fashion as important as a pulse, would deem this purchase wildly unnecessary, borderline irresponsible. We might respond it has to do with classic shape and timeless style, but there’s a bigger reason a Birkin is a Birkin. Park Avenue gossip girls went gaga over Chloe’s first version of the Paddington primarily because of its buttery soft texture and natural distressing. In other words, it’s all about the leather.

MShop recently visited an exhibit to showcase a select group of vegetable tanned leather factories in Tuscany, Italy. Ridges, grooves and pleats popped out of the raw skins against the smooth white surfaces of the Open House Gallery, an all white venue on Mulberry Street, to showcase the uniqueness of every piece of textile purchased. Skins of all colors were bunched into plexiglass cases, or draped gratuitously over podiums, each display inviting touch and inspiring desire. Every skin we passed we envisioned pinned with gemmed hardware or stamped with grommets and dangling from our arm by a sturdy, statement-making handle.

In all its simplicity, the exhibit was a successful lesson in custom and carefully made leather goods. The 26 tanneries who comprise the Italian Vegetable-Tanned Leather Consortium employ old traditions of leather tanning to manufacture a more organic, unique product, and Open House’s raw space served as the perfect venue to illuminate every mark of originality. Bravo to the collaboration. Anything that puts us in the mood to shop is worth checking out.

For more exhibitions and information about the Open House Gallery, check out: http://www.openhousegallery.org/