When we launched a new bag in 2016, it was called Go to the Library. The very first one went to Grete Kodi – one of our Gold Clients today.
The same design is now called Mild Librarian and has become one of the best-known bags to come out of our studio. Grete's is the very first one.
Ten years, almost every day.
On the side worn against the body, you can still clearly see the leather's original, very dark blue colour. The outer side, however, has seen ten years of sunlight – and it shows. A lot of everyday life, a lot of light.
Vegetable-tanned leather doesn't simply wear out over time. It changes, develops its own tone and collects traces of the life lived with it.
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This is how Grete describes her ten-year companion:
“This bag may be ten years old, but I wouldn't call it old. It's definitely one of the highest-quality, most durable and stylish pieces in my wardrobe. Major love for this design.”
Why this bag ages the way it does
Go to the Library was one of our first production models to have circular design principles built in from the very beginning. In practice, that means two things.
First, the pattern pieces take the shape of the raw material into account. Leather doesn't arrive at our studio as a convenient rectangle, so the cutting layout follows the material we actually have in front of us. This allows us to leave as little leather unused as possible.
Second, the bag has as few permanent holes, seams and cuts as possible. The idea is simple: what you carry with you is also raw material for the future.
The same leather that makes up a large bag today can, years or even decades from now, begin a new life as a smaller product. The patterns for our smaller accessories have been designed with exactly this in mind – they fit both our production offcuts and the second-round cuts of our bag designs.
That was the plan. In practice, things have turned out a little differently. Better.
After ten years, Grete's bag is in a condition where another ten or twenty years shouldn't be much of a challenge.
Its second round can probably wait until Grete's grandchildren. Before then, the bag can come back to us for regular maintenance, and individual worn parts can be replaced when needed. That is exactly why the bag has a modular design – wear in one part doesn't have to mean the end of the whole bag.
Mild Librarian is still available, made from the same vegetable-tanned leather. If you want to help your own bag along on a similarly long journey, we've written more about it in our bag care post. And if you're curious about circular design itself, you can read more about our thinking here.
Thank you, Grete, for letting us photograph both you and the bag.