Leather | Baxter

TO BE OR NOT TO BE... LEATHER?

Can the same material be truly faithful to itself and, at the same time, change into something completely different?

This is Baxter magic: choosing the full-grained, most exquisite leather, working it, keeping its qualities as a natural, transpiring, flexible, resisting, pleasant to the touch, distressed material, perfect in its imperfections that make it unique, and using it in unprecedented ways.

Everything begins with a travel, from the Northern European mountains to the Italian tannery districts. Thus, begins the second life of the first-choice leather, a creative adventure where the main actor is the hide and the main story is written by the artisans’ hands joined by the designers’ creativity.

The rest is the chronicle of a productive excellence. Relying on master tanners, keepers of ancient traditions, the hide is manipulated and dyed with natural anilines. In a harmonious balance between research and tradition, that finds in every chapter of this tale the concatenation between hand and machine, the experimentation is broaden to the employment of different materials that accompany it into its transformation.

The versatility, one of its great qualities, makes sure that it can be interpreted by the designers in unexpected ways, as if it was no longer itself. Being folded, sewed, pleated, screen-printed and polished, the hide is one and many, and, in its metamorphosis, it becomes: the tissue on which it is possible to duplicate vintage geometrical motifs; the shell of a suspending sitting that is not merely a covering but a structural element for the outdoor; a smooth velvet; a wrinkled fabric or one sewed with raw-cut edges.

The end of this tale sees our protagonist, the hide, deeply changed, but still recognizable in its quality. A noble element, intrinsic expression of unicity, always different and impossible to reproduce, proposed by Baxter in a new disguise, marvellous and tailored-made like a haute couture dress.