Sometimes a new customer will contact me with concern over how to look after vegetable tanned leather. The most common question is: I’ve got a scratch on the leather.. what should do?!

Well, surface scratches are very easy to rub away on vegetable tanned leather. Technically, all it takes is gently massaging the displaced oil back into the scratched area with your thumb. A quick rub with a soft cloth (a hand in a thick wool sock will do) for larger areas or, if the leather has got a little dry, a good polish with a water-based cleanser …

but the thing about vegetable tanned leather is largely to use it and let it develop it’s own character. This takes a little hurdle of faith, the time between a bag being “box fresh” and becoming part of who you are. Give it that time and, before you know it,  the bag will start to get a very personal patina.  After a couple of months, and some of those loving polishes, and it will start to have its very own ‘glow’.

(You know sometimes you see someone with an old leather item that you can tell they have used for years, maybe decades -it may even once have been their dad’s –  and yet it looks fantastic. You know you can’t buy that personality… that’s vegetable tanned leather.)

The owner of this Overnight Cabin Bag is one such customer, asking within a week how to keep his bag mark-free. As you can see, a couple of months later and he, or rather his beautiful daughter, is really taking the leap of faith and “loving and living” this bag!

(thank you, Simon, for the very special photo… but keep an eye open… I can see that bag disappearing into her wardrobe before you know it!)