Why you shouldn’t buy a suede bag
I often get asked, why I don’t have a suede bag in my collection. The answer is simple, I just don’t like the leather of a suede bag. A leather bag should be an item, that in best case can be inherited to your children. Its a product made with a lot of effort by whomever and my believe is, that we shouldn’t consume products like those, but look for products, that honour the efforts. Leather can be classified into three categories.
What does suede mean?
First one is the Full-grain, it is the most expensive, durable, strongest and honest part of the leather. If the surface of the leather isn’t clean enough, often the top part of the leather is being split out. The resulting part is called Top-grain. It is lower quality, but you can still use it for some products. The last split is Suede, which means that from the whole leather the best parts are cut out for more durable items and the leftover of this leathers is the suede.
Why do suede bags even exists?
Items like a suede bag are made out of suede leather, because it is way cheaper than a full grain or even top grain leather. Suede leather is less durable, will get scratched fasted, get dirty and might even tear apart after a couple of uses.
Many brands advertise suede leather as a luxury material, used by the traditional high fashion brands. This brands might have used suede leather for particular parts in some products. For example lining in some less stressed parts of their collection. But they wouldn’t have produced a leather bag with this leather entirely. It is an argument to win over costumers, who hadn’t yet the chance to inform themselves about it.
A short look on wikipedia for cross check
We use full grain leather
For our collection I only use full grain leather. I don’t just prefer the look over suede leather but also my bags should last longer than a standard suede bag.
Have a look on our clutch made out of full grain leather to see the difference.