Mike Redwood
Columnist
International Leather Maker
For some time now, I have been following the family-owned luxury brand Zegna and its second-skin footwear. In one shoe, they have moved from logo‑luxury to material-luxury. Elements such as glove leather and the focus on suede and nubuck-type leathers to create a casual, but not fully unconstructed look are not individually new, yet the story from sourcing through design – including triple stitching and shape forming – is very powerful. No wonder magazine articles in recent days have discussed their status signalling for off-duty billionaires and appropriateness for modern boardrooms.
What Zegna is doing in a single product line was visible as a broader mood at Lineapelle. These shoes fit perfectly with a slower, more natural world. One with an emphasis on craft and quality rather than cost and disposability. Exactly what was seen at Lineapelle, which was explained in the excellent ILM report as “quiet but quietly confident”.
Suede and nubuck have always fitted well with browns and greens
The leather industry is a difficult place, but it makes good sense to acknowledge the market as having stopped sliding even if recovery remains tentative. Rather than recovery, it is more likely the end of the fall. The trend observations are also revealing softer leathers and a natural colour palette. We will have many colleagues delighted to see lamb and sheepskin rising once more, along with beautiful calf. Additionally, suede types have always fitted well with browns, greens and natural neutrals. This is a move towards more tactile qualities unattainable with copies. This suggests fashion might be re-aligning with nature-coded materials, perfect for leather’s true combined nature–craft narrative.
We can talk again about leather as a biomaterial rather than only as luxury and consider circularity as a key component.
In a slowing global world, the view of last week’s APLF that the leather industry was repositioning and consolidating makes sense. The industry is itself admitting that decelerated, quality-led growth is the realistic horizon. In that context, talks by Frederico Brugnoli placed longevity as a strategic metric, linking environmental and technical performance — durability redefined as sustainability’s ally, not its obstacle.
A return to “material reality”
This marks a return to “material reality”, involving fashion rediscovering the aesthetics of leather. Footwear remains the most price-sensitive sector and most exposed to synthetics, but Zegna shows how craft, fashion trend and technical innovation can converge to build a high-quality, value-for-money core. Automotive with electric vehicle design apparently favouring vegan narratives remains a battleground, but in fighting it, leather should remember that the over-expansion into lower ranges that pushed leather towards commodity looks was self-inflicted. Chasing volume indiscriminately is never sound marketing. Winning back control will require an emphasis on more considered products that look and behave like the leather of the artisan. Leather’s future must shift toward fashion and craft ecosystems rather than industrial bulk sectors.
Changes in leather industry governance
That said, it looks like industry governance is finally catching up with the story the industry needs. The statute changes at the European tanning confederation, Cotance, is very significant. I remember being invited to attend the Premier Vision trade fair in Paris more than a decade ago and watched the industry interact with Government ministers. I was told this only became possible once the French luxury goods traders, makers and tanners combined to create a scale worthy of Government attention. Since then, the UK has seen great benefit from doing something similar, and to the outsider like me it has been a transformation.
Cotance opening membership to research, education, clusters and innovation groups acknowledges that leather is now a networked material ecosystem, not a simple value chain. Even more so if the project on Leather Industrial Symbiosis is taken into account.
This aligns with the composition of visitors to fairs such as Lineapelle and APLF. Poor trade meant fewer numbers, and so did the Winter Olympics for Milan and the Iran War for APLF, and this highlighted the change. Historically, leather fairs have been the domain of leather buyers, trading intermediaries, design scouts, journalists and observers, but now we are seeing more technical and strategic visitors with leather being treated as a regulated, scrutinised material. These include sustainability executives from fashion brands, research staff, compliance and certification experts, plus traceability teams.
An ecosystem mentality, rather than seeing merely a leather industry, encourages a fuller discussion of agriculture, nature and artisan skills. It makes it more obvious to lay emphasis on more natural aesthetics, authenticity, tactility and the real leather story. But this involves understanding the material as craft and as science rather than one or the other. What is now reappearing at last is interest in the collagen structure, the fibre network, biodegradability and lifecycle. This also fits with better comparisons with synthetic materials while assessing whether some biomaterials will make good partners for tanneries to work with in the future.
With the language moving us back to the material story of leather and away from luxury branding, quietly, the science and technical discussions are returning and I hope that what I am seeing is a relocation back into the tannery. More than anything, we need the tanners to assert their technological dominance with their customers directly and develop product with that dyadic in mind. This subtle shift to an increasing presence of technical material discussion around leather is hugely significant beyond simple compliance.
When materials start being discussed technically again in the proper industry locations, it usually means the industry is reframing its identity rather than only strengthening evidence-based sustainability communications.
This is a major conceptual change. It may, in part, have been provoked by regulation, but scientific understanding of leather is re-entering the conversation and this implies that the industry may be rebuilding a narrative around leather as a natural biomaterial.
While Zegna’s Second Skin Triple Stitch shoes sit firmly in the luxury price band since they carry so many wonderful real material messages of technology and aesthetics for the new leather ecosystem, mentally they are in the great value segment!
mike@internationalleathermaker.com
You can find Dr Mike Redwood across social media at @michaelredwood.
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