The road less travelled
As an early career leathergoods designer navigates her post-graduation, we learn how leatherwork has shaped her life so far, and how her personal relationship with craft has inspired a less-than-conventional approach to doing business.
Italian designer Annagiulia Giannetti, who calls leather “literally my obsession”, traces her passion for the material back to the age of six or seven, when she first discovered and fell in love with the world of horse-riding. Her enthusiasm was so contagious that her entire family went on to take up the hobby, leading her father, a native of Tuscany, to purchase his very first horse soon afterwards. “It all began from there,” she says.
With hindsight, family ties to the region and its riding traditions, such as those of the horse-mounted butteri herders in the Tuscan Maremma region, known for their distinctive saddles, would prove significant in terms of how leather would weave its way into the story of Ms Giannetti’s early years. She recalls childhood trips to Selleria Gianoli, a saddlery in Pavia, where “the smell of leather was unmistakable”. She became especially fascinated by the practice and technique of saddle-stitching. Another memory centres on family visits to the village shoemaker, their go-to for saddle repairs closer to home. The designer was so enchanted by this craftsman’s work that she began spending hours with him in his shop, just to observe his artisanship and learn all that she possibly could. Now, looking back, early moments such as these feel particularly meaningful.
Forging her own path
Deciding to specialise in leatherwork, though, was almost too scary at first, Ms Giannetti explains. She initially didn’t want to risk going down a road that might end up “too specific”, so instead elected to pursue a more general fashion programme at Polimoda in Florence, which resulted in a four-year love-hate relationship with the wider world of fashion design prior to her graduation in 2021. Tellingly, every free moment was spent honing her leathergoods skillset and working on independent leather projects. So much so, she imagines being able to begin her university studies all over again, only this time focusing on what she actually likes and is good at: leather craft. Incidentally, Ms Giannetti was similarly none too impressed with her experience of luxury group LVMH’s Women@Dior career mentorship initiative, but for different reasons. Despite being one of only two Polimoda students to be picked for the 2020 cohort, she “never met or even talked with” her mentor and “honestly expected a lot more” to come from her participation. That said, her time in Florence, disrupted somewhat by covid-19 lockdowns, during which time she returned to her rural hometown of Pianello Val Tidone in Emilia-Romagna, continuing her education remotely, was fruitful. “Florence is the right place to be if you want to know more about leather,” she states. Indeed, it was at Polimoda that the designer encountered the problem of leather waste for the first time. The students would receive unwanted hides and skins from various companies on a weekly basis and the seed of an idea to purchase only surplus or deadstock leathers began to germinate in her mind, primarily as a way to keep perfectly useful, high-quality, natural material in circulation. Although upcycling may be something of a quick win in today’s responsible business arena, the downside of this manner of sourcing includes indirect support for overproduction. Another challenge is, of course, the unpredictability of the quality of the leather and the colours available at any given time.
Nowadays, the designer buys her leather exclusively via Zerow, a marketplace-like platform for leftover materials and upcycled finished products based in Italy. Through involvement with Scandicci leather waste collection and sorting hub Zerolab, as well as its work alongside local leathergoods start-ups like Sieme, Zerow is itself linked to Aspri, the Association of Recycled Leather in Italy (Associazione Pelle Recuperata Italiana), founded in 2020. Aspri was established to facilitate the redirection and repurposing of the approximately 800,000 to 1.6 million square-metres of excess leather produced by domestic manufacturers each year, according to data from Italian tannery association UNIC and the European Commission. Ms Giannetti calls her relationship with the Zerow team excellent and, acknowledging the progress she has made in recent years, notes that she no longer selects her material (predominantly nappa) based solely on colour, but also now carefully examines its more exacting requirements and quality standards.
Desire lines
An additional, still atypical, element to Ms Giannetti’s practice is her decision to do away with prioritising the names of her designs when it comes to sales. Instead, each product, all of which she makes by hand, is given a title that reflects the number of hours that went into creating it. A top-handle bag constructed from seven different leathers and suedes, priced at $1,115, is listed only as ‘30 Hours’ on her website, for instance, whereas a mini bag, formed using macramé knots, is entitled ‘12 Hours’ ($335). Shoppers must slow down and reconsider the real artisanal value behind their purchases, she suggests. Naming her leathergoods in this way seemed like “a good starting point”.
Besides different styles of handbag, another key part of the current line-up is chunky, plaited mobile phone holders that can double up as bag straps (2.5 hours to make; selling for just under $125), belts and tops in the style of an overbust corset, again pieced together through knotting thin strips of discarded leather. The designer has previously dabbled in footwear, pet accessories, homeware and other types of apparel. All can be customised, from colour to construction, dimensions and leather sourcing. At least for the moment, Ms Giannetti frames her leatherwork as a project, rather than a brand. The main aim is to stay on the upcycling path, lest the pursuit of growth or mass recognition begin to detract from her own sustainability principles. Without the positive response she received when her final Polimoda graduation collection showed at Pitti Uomo during summer 2021, she may not have been moved to set up an official e-commerce channel at all, she explains.
Of course, this is not to say the early passion for expanding her creative skills repertoire has abated. As before, she remains curious, always energised by the desire to learn, experiment and improve, never taking the quick or easy route. Various leatherworking techniques may be present in a single piece, for example, which is not a simple task. Next up on the horizon is studying the art of basket weaving and perhaps continuing to explore refurbishing old furniture, something she has been pursuing in her leisure time, in her own fashion and “obviously always using leather”.
Photo: Possibilities abound with deadstock leathers, although there is always a degree of uncertainty regarding factors such as colour and material quality, which ongoing education in the field is helping Ms Giannetti to navigate for herself.
