Almost The End of An Era

This has been a long time coming; I'm abandoning ship and jumping aboard a new one. It was never the plan to keep After the Denim on the Blogger-format, however I stayed here out of necessity. I have finally created my own website, which includes and new blog and more importantly a web-shop.

You can visit it  here 

 http://after-the-denim.com/

The new site has been in the making for quite some time, and I'm finally pleased enough with the result to make it public, and you, my dear readers, are the first ones to know. 

I plan to leave this blog here as a memory of something great and I'll continue the blogging on the site in a new format. Although the new site is obviously more business oriented, than this one I promise that I'll continue writing about the stuff that I wrote about before without considering the business aspect of things. Things won't change that much on the blog part, I hope, except for writing a whole lot more, than I've done recently and hopefully the frequency will also go up. I'm striving to get better. And I sincerely hope that you'll continue reading ATD and commenting like you've done in the past. It has been so great and I feel very fortunate about all the readers, followers, people who comment and even that Indonesian guy who decided to copy my entire blog.

But the move does include some changes, I'm afraid. You'll now be able to buy the leather goods that I make, which you also could before, but it has been made a lot easier now. I'll continually be adding more of my own stock to the web-shop and I'll also be taking custom orders.
Secondly I hope that I'll be adding stuff by other makers and of course also some vintage finds. The principles for the shop will of course be very similar to ATD's codex, and the focus will be on quality, authenticity, country of origin, design, price, history and that je ne sais quoi that good things have.

The blogging will continue and it will continue here

How a Kelly Bag Is Made at The Hermés Atelier

In terms of fashion houses Hermés really stands out. They have their own atelier and they really seem to care about quality and craftsmanship. For instance I recently read that they bought the majority of the of well-renowned French Tannery, Tannerie d'Annonay, in order to secure enough high quality leathers for their bags and leather goods. That's dedication to quality. I also think Hermés could also very well be the one of the only luxury goods companies that still use saddle stitching to some degree.

Some time ago, a rather long time ago, I came across this in-depth series of photographs from the Hermés Atelier depicting, how their iconic Kelly Bag is made and showing the steps that it involves. Plus it puts a face to the people that make and create. And personally I just like looking at the leather tools that they use, which are most likely all made by the venerable French company, Blanchard.

I would like to link to the photographer, who took the pictures, however I can't find the link and I've been unable to find the website, where I found the pictures.