IN CONVERSATION WITH:

Ahead of Tusting Leathergoods, hosting their exclusive pop-up in our Elizabeth Street Boutique, we spoke to Gillian Tusting, Head of Brand, about all things leather, sustainability, what it means to be a luxury British brand & more ...

_____

What’s your personal journey with Tusting—your earliest memories of the workshop, and what inspired you to step into shaping the brand today?

With a family business, you can end up taking unplanned career moves, and brand management was never exactly on my list. By marrying into the family, I certainly became involved more by default than design, but it turned out to be the perfect home for my curious brain – there are so many aspects to manage. In particular, I’m fascinated and passionate about how customers perceive the product they are investing in, as well as the care they receive during their interactions with the brand. From the first time I set foot in the workshop, I was in awe of the skills displayed in taking huge skins of leather and creating beautiful, tactile and wholly functional things from it. The rest is just about doing the pieces, and the people who made them, justice in bringing them to appreciative customers.

Tusting’s heritage dates back to 1875—how does that history influence your vision, and who is the modern “Tusting woman” you design for?

I know, 150 years! I think it provides confidence in the long view – leather goods should last, so we therefore need always to be mindful of not falling for any stylistic fads but to curate the best of modern style so that we’re making new classics. The ‘Tusting Woman’ appreciates that, though, she’s usually an achiever who has confidence in her own choices and isn’t looking to have them noticed and ratified by onlookers via bling and branding. And she might be any age at all – it’s a generational product for all generations. .

Sustainability is a huge topic in fashion—how do you see leather’s role in a responsible future, and why is offering lifelong repairs such an important part of your philosophy of luxury?

Buy well, buy less? It’s an adage that could sum us up, really. Leather has attracted some strong, unhelpful, and slightly ignorant opinions over the last decade or two, but it actually has a huge amount to offer in terms of being a sustainable medium. It begins life as a recycled material. Very few consumers understand that, with the rare exception of some “exotics” like alligators (which we never use), no animal is ever raised to produce leather. They are raised for meat, and the skins are a waste product – if they don’t get made into leather, they go into landfill. The leather-making industry is now extremely well regulated to minimise its impact on the environment, and once we have leather, we have a material that makes more beautiful, more usable and – crucially – longer-lasting shoes, bags, clothes, car and plane seats (and a multitude of other things) than any of the alternative materials. Then, when they eventually do come to the end of their useful life, they biodegrade. That’s a very impressive set of properties. And then, of course, on top of that, they are often way more repairable than more synthetic or fabric-based accessories. Offering repairs was never even a discussion for us, it’s just the right thing to do. On a business level, it works by earning customer loyalty and respect, so we see it as another long-view win.