Material change: Gucci's fashion swing

It’s totally fabric.” This was the answer from a Tuscan raw-hides agent, when asked if there had been a positive effect on the raw-material orders deriving from the booming sales for the most important Italian leather goods brand, Gucci. It was certainly an exaggeration, in Tuscan style, because it cannot be said that the handbags made by the Gucci brand, owned by Kering, are all fabric or that Gucci can’t be considered an important customer for tanneries.

But the hyperbole had a kernel of truth, as Leather International found out when it visited the Gucci boutique in Milan on the eve of Fashion Week. There was an entire section of bags – the item most sought after by clients in the vital Asian market – made with the iconic ‘double-G’ fabric and with a printed cat applied on the most visible part of the bag. In fact, these bags and other models actually contained very little finished leather.

A second reflection on the topic emerged during the presentation of Italian leather goods data, before the Mipel show. It depicted a particularly happy moment for the sector in terms of exports. In the first ten months of 2017, total foreign sales increased by 14.2% and, for Switzerland, the logistics base of some top Italian brands including Gucci, sales increased by 35% in value. But when talking to tanners, none express particular enthusiasm for the destination of their goods. The turnover at the end of the year in the Italian tanning sector seems to be in line with that of 2017. The definitive data will be published in June, but the figures are likely to be steady, thanks to the continued trend of leather use in the automotive industry. Leather goods may not have diminished, but they have certainly not increased.

The Michele effect

It is therefore clear that the boom in handbag production does not correspond to a similar boom in the use of finished leather. In other words, the real growth is in the use of fabric and other materials. If one was to exaggerate in Tuscan style, they could also call it ‘the Michele effect’, linking the increased use of fabric to the style created by Gucci’s brilliant head designer, Alessandro Michele, rather than the actual value of the leather material. Michele’s vision for Gucci has been based on breaking the traditional design patterns of luxury products. Under his direction, Gucci bags have featured wallpaper prints, embroidered dragonflies or cat images, playing with materials without straying from the DNA of the brand for which the signature feature is still the ‘double-G’ fabric.

“This [double-G] material, which is part of the Gucci story, blocked the [planned] transition to the Guccissima leather. My impression is that it was, above all, a stylistic decision, but it was certainly useful in terms of marginality,” says Andrea Calistri, a longtime leather goods producer. Calistri was the goods fair, at the end of the 1980s. His family business is a reference point for the Florentine luxury bag industry, and he is also a founder of the Alta Scuola di Pelletteria, the ‘high school of leather goods’. The name Gucci is repeatedly cited in discussions among bag manufacturers, probably for the extraordinary results achieved by Alessandro Michele’s stylistic vision. But it should also be added that Gucci is not the only brand focused on alternative materials, enriching them with abundant embroidery, stones, metals and other accessories or applied prints. It is certainly a consolidated trend and raises the question: could leather be going out of fashion?

Mixed results

Orietta Pelizzari, an expert in fashion trends and consultant at Mipel, doesn’t subscribe to the theory that leather is out of fashion, but does have a warning for the industry.

“Many consumers today no longer want to buy a fully leather bag because they find it a little bit boring,” she says. “The attraction is obtained by resorting to a mix of materials, to what US buyers define as ‘mixed media’. By combining leather with fabrics and technical materials, it emerges and expresses its distinctive characteristics, but in this case, the buying decision tends to reward the most natural leathers, the vegetal concepts, the anilines.”

On the one hand, the market has embraced the eclecticism of the Gucci brand, which has built a product to conquer the Asian consumer market. On the other, leather is finding a space in the emerging athleisure trend, where it is used in backpacks, for example. But leather is limited to detailing in sport products, because it is essential to have inserts in nylon or technical fabric so that the bags stay cool and comfortable for the user. “Paradoxically, we now have a situation where a bag made entirely of leather is not appreciated by the consumer, because that leather could be confused with polyurethane,” Pelizzari says.

This analysis is shared by a historical name for a style applied to handbags. Renato Angi is the founder of Angi Venezia and is still the director of style for the brand, but he also works as a consultant for big foreign brands. Angi cites the example of the so-called ‘stampa dollaro’ or dollar-stamped leather, which has dominated the market in recent years. According to Angi, dollar-stamped leather is so widespread it is now considered a low-level product, comparable with the cheaper Chinese imported synthetic material. “Tanneries should develop new articles, which are intended to be smooth but more accessible, to convince designers to come back to leather for their cheaper lines. The main brands, in fact, produce leather bags for the main collections, but their volumes are made with fabrics and synthetics,” he warns.

If fabric is increasingly used as a substitute for leather, it’s often because of weight and this is particularly true when it comes to travel and business bags.

“Lightness is fundamental because when we travel, there are restrictive rules. Think about when we go to the airport,” says Roberto Briccola, owner of Bric’s, a family company that specialises in luggage and business bags. “Leather items are always favoured because they give the consumer a sense of strength. But the bag must be light, waterproof and resistant to wear over time.”

Pelizzari highlights a similar point. “Light leathers certainly exist, but they have a high cost. And the cost is always a binding aspect in the materials’ selection [by fashion designers],” she says.

Growth sector

The golden era of leather for the handbags began immediately after the great financial crisis of 2008 and carried through until 2014. It was a period of extraordinary growth, during which several Italian tanneries that specialised in footwear were reconverted to become suppliers for leather goods companies. In the same period, the French luxury holding companies acquired several tanneries in France to modernise them, thus directly entering the leather-processing market. But, if today, the race to leather is somehow over, or is at least slowing down due to changing design trends, the race for investment in production facilities remains topical. Whether in leather or fabric, demand continues to grow and companies are unable to satisfy it.

Calistri has observed the construction of increasingly large factories in the Florence area that are directly controlled by the luxury groups. “These [companies] are internalising an important part of their previously external supply chain,” he says. “It is the answer to the problem of control over the supply chain, which is understandable, as well as being a confirmation that these players trust in the future of the leather goods’ business, because it is necessary to hire hundreds of employees if you have great programmes for the future. But by doing so, Tuscan leather goods in the long run will no longer offer an answer to the extremely flexible needs that have always distinguished our sector.”