Journal
What vegetable-tanned leather is, and why it changes color
Most leather today is chrome-tanned: fast, soft and uniform. Vegetable tanning is the older method. Hides are soaked in tannins extracted from bark and plants over weeks rather than hours.
The result is firmer, with a tighter grain, and it reacts to the world around it. Sunlight, hand oils and rain all darken it over time. A natural vegetable-tanned bag that starts pale will be a deep honey color within a year of use.
Some people find that unsettling, since the bag they receive is not the bag they will own later. We find it the whole point. We use vegetable-tanned leather for every piece in the collection, and we will describe the expected change on each piece's page.
