Throwback 2023
Santa Croce, Tuscany
17-18th Feb, 2023
The second installment of AS A BIRD's travel journal series.
We will look back on the memories of our travels around the world in four chapters.
This time, I will introduce my first trip to Europe since the pandemic, a trip from Florence to Santa Croce to Milan to Paris in 2023.
It's been quite a while since my last update.
After a long flight to Europe, we arrived in Florence via Paris.
We then entered Santa Croce, a tannery area of Tuscany.
Click here for the previous article
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As you would expect in Italy, after a fantastic lunch we returned to the factory warehouse.
I felt happy to be back in a space filled with the smell of leather.
The sense of being on the ground is something that has become less and less apparent during the pandemic.
I didn't dislike the daily routine of sitting at my desk at home working on design work, as I felt it was efficient, but for some reason I didn't feel a sense of fulfillment.
I guess I was just producing output every day and wasn't getting enough stimulation from chance encounters.
As I look around the warehouse, I see materials that I would never have noticed when I was an in-house designer.
This is a sample of leather called " bubble lambs ," which has a different look for each piece and even has different grain in different parts of the same piece.
Lamb leather, which has an overwhelming and impressive grain, is not often chosen by major designers because its unevenness makes it difficult to produce large quantities of the same product.
Since becoming a designer, I have had a lot of experience working with major brands throughout my career, so I can understand the feeling of passing up something just because it is uneven and difficult to work with.
Even after I was shown other leather samples, I couldn't help thinking about the " Bubble Lamb " that I had seen earlier.
Before even thinking about what kind of items I can make using this material, I am strongly attracted to the power that leather itself possesses.
No matter what kind of item is made, the expression will be different depending on which part is cut from a single piece of leather. It will be a one-of-a-kind item.
After leaving this tannery, we visited several local shoe factories and tanneries.
After work, I was very happy to see some acquaintances at Santa Croce for the first time in a while.
"Visiting tanneries to find quality leather and using it to develop future items" is a title I often wrote on my business trip itinerary when I was working for a company. But that was just a pretext.
The best part of visiting a site is getting a feel for the atmosphere and meeting the people there.
This is the second chapter of my 2023 journey from Florence to Santa Croce to Milan to Paris, my first trip to Europe since the pandemic, and I looked back on the moment I encountered bubble lamb leather in Santa Croce.
We have already launched items using bubble lamb leather . When I introduce the products to customers in the store, I remember this trip and the moment I started making the items as if it were yesterday.
The next chapter, Chapter 3, will move to Milan. I hope you will enjoy the next chapter as well.