Weather Vain: Prague, Czech Republic - 50 With Scattered Clouds
The perfect get-up to say, “Dobrý den, Praha!” —erica
Clockwise from top left:
+ A Cut25 leather jacket that will look at home at the Museum of Czech Cubism.
+ A stack of Iosselliani rings—jazzy enough for dinner at Coda.
+ Vic Italy boots that are ready for a moonlit stroll across the Charles Bridge.
+ A wispy M.Patmos scarf—to keep you warm if a pivo or four doesn’t cut it.
+ A Collina Strada tote, with room for a Czech crystal souvenir.
+ A Joseph cream dress, suited to roaming castles.
+ Collette Ishiyama earrings as slick as the design at Lokal.
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Weather Vain: Los Angeles, California - 72 and Partly Cloudy
Tomorrow, I head to L.A. (to meet Claire, who’s already there!). Here’s what I’d be jonesing to wear if I was coast-swapping a day earlier. —erica
Clockwise from top left:
+ A Blk Denim leather jacket that’s just wishing, hoping, praying for warm weather.
+ Hoops! Brought to you by K/LLER and ready for a day of shopping on Melrose, West Third, or Sunset.
+ An Eayrslee wallet that proves you aren’t scared of those sunny, Cali hues.
+ A just-nautical Whit dress—take it out for some peel-and-eat shrimp at Son of a Gun.
+ The kind of House of Harlow shades that dot the pages of Us Weekly.
+ Cool girl, I-live-in-Laurel-Canyon shoes (boots? sandals? both?) from LD Tuttle.
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Draught Dry Goods
“I think once you learn how to run a straight stitch and fix your sewing machine whenever it breaks, you’re kind of in business to do whatever you want to do,” says Caesy Oney of Draught Dry Goods, who purchased his first vintage Singer at a thrift store while in art school in Oregon and got to work.
There was no aha moment. “When I was in college and learned to sew, I took off immediately and was like, ‘I want to form a company,’” he explains. “It was a one way street to Draught Dry Goods. I ran the project out of a studio in Montana for the first six months, and no one gave a shit what I was doing there. We had a local cobbler who was the one who gave me my first leather, ordered me some of my first tools.”
A few years later, Caesy settled back in Portland and launched a full line of buttery leather and waxed canvas bags, accessories, and (more recently) varsity-style jackets. The goal: to put out a collection with a simple, clean aesthetic, his mantras “permanent vacation” and “maximum pleasure” at the forefront. “I hate branding. I’m not interested in people shouting to the world that they have a Draught Dry Goods bag,” Caesy notes. “I just want it to be a beautiful bag.” —jackie varriano
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In Character: Logan Echolls
Logan Echolls was not the most stylin’ dude at Neptune High—getting past his Hot Topic wardrobe was half the battle (er, for us if not for Veronica). Here’s what he wore—ok, fine, way better-looking versions of what he wore—to win our eternal LoVe. —erica
A necklace (here, John Hardy) that puts out major brah vibes, giving his use of SAT words like “anthropomorphic” even more zing.
An aggressively bad-boy moto jacket by Rag & Bone, just asking for a first kiss.
A Barker Black bow tie as swank as his room at the Neptune Grand—really adding gravitas to lines like, “I thought our story was epic, you know, you and me.”
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Of a Kind
The brand-spanking-new bag line Mansur Gavriel proves it’s what’s on the inside that counts (no offense, striking camel exterior). —erica
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Sara Barner Crafts a Bag
Ok, let’s get down to business.
Since she started working in a leather shop part-time during college, accessories designer Sara Barner has learned all sorts of tricks. Two things you need to craft bags as lovely as hers? “Nice material will make a really big difference and…lots of patience,” she laughs, reflecting on how much time goes into making one of her killer creations. Below, she takes us through everything involved in crafting one of her most simple bags. —koun bae
“This leather is called English bridle, and it’s a vegetable-tanned leather that I get in the States. Right now, I work with three different kinds of leather. The bridle is a heavier, stiffer—it has a more raw quality to it. The bag I’m making for Of a Kind is lambskin, and that’s a really soft, thinner leather that needs to get lined. I don’t know the quality of a leather until I see it and feel it, so it’s a long process to find really nice leather to work with. Once I find it, I kind of stick with it.”
“I examine the skin and map out the pieces that I need to cut. There are scars and marks on the skin that I have to work around. I usually cut the leather with a rotary cutter.”
“The body of the bag is pieced out, and then I use the strap cutter for cutting the long pieces for the handles. That allows me to cut an even, straight piece.”
“I punch the holes for where the hand-stitching needs to happen on the handles.”
“And then I assemble the body of the bag and sew it with an industrial machine.”
“After the bag is all sewn together, I trim around the sewn edges with a rotary cutter, and then dye and polish the edges so that they have a dark, shiny finish. I do the same for the straps.”
“Once that happens, the handles get hand-stitched to the bag with a waxed linen thread. It’s pretty labor-intensive!”
“I don’t usually make one bag at a time, since it’s more efficient to make a few at a time, but one bag takes at least a few hours to make.”
The edition Sara made for us is coming in the morning! Don’t miss it…
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Canoe
In graduate school, Natalie Davis wrote her thesis on the storytelling power of patterns. “When you look at patterns, you focus on shape, color, etc.,” she explains. “But all of those choices have meaning.”
These considerations have always been significant to Natalie’s work: She is a graphic designer by training and launched her first venture, a home goods line called Miss Natalie, in 2007, inspired by handkerchiefs that her grandfather and father carried. After moving to Austin with her husband in 2009, Natalie began experimenting with leather, working from the couple’s new digs overlooking a lake. The outcome: a new brand suited to her new environment. “Canoe had this rustic quality to it, but it also had this timelessness,” she says. “When I think about canoes, I think about the time I spent on the water, the calm and peace.”
Natalie’s handmade leather pieces—bags, jewelry, wallets, and keychains—evoke this sense of serenity. They’re simple and straightforward, but they still make the most of her pattern-obsessed background, working in elements drawn from the mosaics she saw during her Catholic school days, Arabic textiles, and, no surprise, the Western boots that speak to her new surroundings. —meghana gandhi
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Annie Williams
Annie Williams has been a wakeboarding instructor, a seamstress, a bouldering-bag designer, a musician—but it wasn’t until she began working in leather that she felt in her element. “It’s really weird—as soon as I sewed into it for the first time, I was like, ‘This is the most amazing material!’” she recalls.
It took Annie some time to master leather, but a bullheaded sensibility kept her going until she had made a name for herself in Nashville. Now, she works from one of the city’s oldest flour mills in a warehouse workshop that a friend organized. “She has this vision of a really well-curated space that is able to host gallery events, with small businesses like craftsmen and artists working there,” Annie explains.
Bringing a pared-down, honest approach to every clutch and wallet that she makes, Annie still finds time for some renaissance-woman multitasking. Next up? Building homes and cabins on the 15 acres she and her architect, gardener, skateboard designer, and rock climber husband now own. But don’t worry: Her leatherwork isn’t going on the backburner anytime soon. —carlye wisel
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Of a Kind
This Elder Statesman jacket is the sort of not-terribly-utilitarian score that would be the pride of your closet for years to come. —erica
