New York avant-garde fashion boutique Hotoveli has announced it will display a new, groundbreaking material this month when it debuts transparent leather called Apparition. The new material has been developed for Hotoveli by ISAAC SELLAM and is both pliable and strong.
“The technique of keeping the leather soft, is obviously a trade secret,” says the head of the tannery. “It came out of the challenge of rethinking leather aesthetics in terms of both visual and touch properties. We asked ourselves: ‘What would be the Holy Grail of leather?’ I would say it would be creating a futuristic material that still maintains the properties that we know, love, and require from leather. So the aim became translucent leather.
“We have been deeply inspired by what other designers and tanneries have achieved in the realm of transparent and translucent leathers over recent years. But our aim was to identify concrete ways we could combine our deep tanning experience with the significant horsepower of our state-of-the-art R&D facility to push the technology forward, solving practical issues that have eluded the industry up-to-now like lasting pliability and the ability to get wet.”
