Not a Patch on leather
Miu Miu brings archival leathers into the fold as it releases its first-ever line of Upcycled bags.
Prada-owned Milanese fashion and leathergoods business Miu Miu, led creatively by namesake designer Miuccia Prada since 1993, weaved leather handbags into its Upcycled collection for the first time earlier this year. The resulting Patch bags, including a stitched-logo version of the label’s new Arcadie model, have each been assembled from pieces of remnant leather, repurposed from some of the luxury company’s earlier designs. “A respect for tradition enriches the here and now,” Miu Miu said of the circularity minded line-up. “The existent is reimagined to create something imbued with heritage.”
Accordingly, all the bags exhibit a deliberately aged patina in key areas, suggestive of a ‘vintage’ look. The denim-heavy capsule likewise features nappa Wander bags rendered in the brand’s signature matelassé or quilted surface texture. Miu Miu only introduced its top-handle Arcadie bag, somewhat reminiscent of ‘big sister’ Prada’s autumn-winter 2000 Bowling style, in June. This followed the Wander’s autumn-winter 2022 debut, which coincided with the presentation of an Upcycled line of leather jackets during fashion week in Paris. For the denim, jeanswear dating from the last millennium exclusively was sourced from specialists across the globe for its various fades, finishes, colours and fabric weights, before undergoing a remaking process in Italy. Trucker jackets, wide-legged jeans, shorts, bra tops, baseball caps, clips and hair bands all ensued. Hand-sewn floral embellishments, inspired by haute couture, pitter-patter over otherwise more workwear-tinged choices, dressing up the denims with black silk chiffon petals, crystal and facetted beads set in “antique” metal. Logoed interior labels are leather, with canvas selected for the inside tags.
Already in its fourth edition, Upcycled by Miu Miu’s availability is inherently limited, given the nature of its materials supply. Perhaps auspiciously, this year’s collection was released in January, well-timed for Chinese New Year on February 10. Upcycled first launched as a concept in 2020.
Territories known and unknown
With the Patch bags’ debut, Miu Miu has shown itself very much in tune with luxury peers like Loewe, Bottega Veneta, Patou, Saint Laurent, Chloé, MCM, Salvatore Ferragamo, Coach, Mansur Gavriel and Mulberry. Each has integrated surplus hides and skins recovered from past seasons in recent years and all say they are mindful of keeping internal stocks and off-cuts in circulation, cognisant of their value. More footwear and leathergoods brands working in a similar manner include Ugg, Reco, Sieme, Roccamore, Clarks Originals and Annagiulia Giannetti. Petit H, Hermès’ own upcycling atelier which works exclusively with the maison’s unused leathers, silks, fabrics and other materials, launched in late 2010. Last year, its limited edition collections toured Osaka and Beijing. Similarly, high-end British carmaker Bentley released an Emmanuel Lawal-designed driving glove crafted from leftover leather in October, inspired by its popular Continental GT model.
What sets Miu Miu’s latest Upcycled range apart, however, is its blockchain verification. Every item is registered on Aura blockchain, which Prada Group, LVMH, Richemont-owned Cartier, OTB and Mercedes-Benz opened to the luxury sector in April 2021. The customer-centric traceability and transparency technology feeds product history, proof of authenticity and handbag lifecycle data to buyers from ideation through distribution via a scannable near-field communications tag inserted under the leather, close to its hand-stitched logo. Clients “will be able to access detailed information about the bag and the material it is made from”, Miu Miu says. Other users of Aura blockchain include Dior, Bulgari, Tod’s, Martin Margiela and Prada itself.
Quantity and quality
With figures from Aspri, the Association of Recycled Leather in Italy (Associazione Pelle Recuperata Italiana), indicating that the Italian tanning industry produces almost 758 million kilograms of finished-leather waste annually, roughly 232 million kilograms of which is created in Tuscany alone, there is more than enough material available for upcycled leathergoods. LVMH-owned Nona Source, which also launched in April 2021, was introduced to help whittle down this supply with luxury brand sourcing teams in mind. Its curation of deadstock hides and skins of the highest quality are offered to both its own houses and external designers alike, at its showrooms, trade shows and online. Nona Source sold approximately 2,000 surplus skins to its “mindful creatives community” in its first year of operations. Meanwhile, Scandicci-based Zerolab opened in spring 2022 as more of a hands-on creative education and leathergoods incubator waste collection centre and sorting effort, working with co-founder Zerow’s leather stocks. Zerolab is the fruit of local upcycling e-commerce platform Zerow’s partnership with Aspri. Last year, Polimoda-trained Italian designer Annagiulia Giannetti, who graduated in 2021 and recently collaborated with Colville and Diadora on a limited line of recycled leather-trimmed sneakerss, told World Leather that she now only purchases her materials from Zerow.
As traceability and transparency tools mature, and sustainability-driven demand for upcycling continues to reach into higher price-points, the breadth and depth of scope for luxury leathergoods companies to invest in such technologies is likely to only advance as things move on. Surely, these can only strengthen brand-led storytelling around material authenticity and provenance. The contemporary, more conscious consumer, especially those in the market for a $4,200 or $2,750 leather Upcycled bag from Miu Miu, will increasingly request this over time, too. But one thing remains the same in the materials marketplace: cut up, deadstock or scrap, the properties and value of so-called alternatives are not a Patch on leather.
A keen appreciation for the patina developed by used and archival materials over time, not to mention design heritage and traditional techniques, is a coherent thread running throughout.
All credits: Miu Miu
