End of the road for leathergoods brand
Paris-based leathergoods brand Phi 1.618 is closing down, at least for now. Founder, Juliette Angeletti, made the announcement on social media on April 7. Ms Angeletti, former international media lawyer, launched the company in 2019.
She said she had not taken the decision lightly, explaining that, for her, Phi 1.618 had never been just an entrepreneurial venture. She said the brand had come about as the result of “a deep, personal conviction”.
She wanted to combine her interest in the Phi Golden Ratio, which ancient Greek thinkers believed gave the most aesthetically pleasing shapes, with a business idea to create a new leathergoods brand.
She wanted it to work to exacting standards, making its products, bags, belts and bracelets, in France from leather tanned in France, and all with a firm commitment to sustainability.
For this, she specialised in sourcing unused, surplus full-grain hides from tanners that supply much bigger luxury brands. She then worked with skilled artisans in France to to turn the leather into eye-catching products that reflected the Golden Ratio. This, principally, meant a rectangle with sides in the proportion of approximately eight:five, but often with triangles, circles and other shapes embedded into it.
She said: “Sometimes need time, then, after a period of silence, it may be possible for them to be reborn, perhaps in a more propitious context.”
