Bag n Fable started because of a bag that fell apart. A well known brand, a real price, and eighteen months later the strap tore out of the body panel because it had been stitched to a single layer of leather with no reinforcement behind it. The leather was fine. The construction was decorative.

Going to where bags are made

That sent us to the workshops rather than the brands. What we found is that the gap between a bag that lasts two years and one that lasts twenty is not the leather, which most brands get roughly right. It is the ten or twelve construction decisions nobody photographs: whether handles are riveted through a reinforcing patch, whether edges are burnished or painted, whether the laptop sleeve is suspended or dropped to the base, whether the base corners of the lining are doubled.

What we got wrong first

Our first run was too stiff. We chose a heavy vegetable tanned hide because it felt serious in the hand, and the bags took four months to break in. Several early customers told us plainly that the bag was beautiful and they were not using it. We changed the hide on the soft shapes and kept the firm one for structured pieces, which is why the range now specifies which build every product is rather than treating leather as one material.

The second thing we got wrong was the monogram. We charged for it. It took about three months to work out that a bag someone has put their initials on is a bag they keep, repair and talk about, and that charging twenty dollars to make that more likely was the wrong way round. It has been free since.

Where they are made

Our workshop is in Sialkot, Pakistan, a city that has made leather goods for well over a century. Eight people, most of whom have been cutting and stitching longer than we have been in business. We say this plainly because a lot of brands go to lengths not to, and the craft here is the reason the bags are what they are, not something to work around.

What we will not do

We will not sell anything under $100, because below that we would have to switch to split leather and glued edges to make the numbers work, and then we would be the brand whose strap tore out. We will not claim a bag is waterproof. And we will not put a bag in the range that we would not carry ourselves.

See how the bags are made for the process itself.