Leather can win big in cities
One of the big trends of the 20th century is urbanisation. After centuries where the urban population was 5%, it had grown to 30% by 1950 and, in 2010, passed 50%. Governments approve of urbanisation since it accelerates GDP growth.
The leather industry must find ways to succeed in the modern city. Urban societies have a different attitude to leather. Citizens do not grow up with livestock, they buy fewer automobiles, live in small spaces so accumulate less “stuff” and rarely entertain at home.
Geographer Danny Dorling anticipated that cities, including their hinterland, would grow to about 32 million, citing Greater Tokyo and Chongqing as examples. Now, areas such as the Pearl River Delta with a complexity of large towns are creating much larger setups.
Paris made noteworthy changes for the recent summer Olympic Games. Fewer vehicles in the city centre, more space for bicycles (leather gloves are essential accessories) and pedestrians. A clean river soon to be available for public recreation. New rail and underground links to previously isolated suburbs, so that much needed lower paid workers can be properly housed and commute to work, and their families can enjoy more of the culture and sport of the city.
High-speed trains mean commuting distances can enlarge allowing some huge Chinese setups to remain cohesive yet avoiding becoming solely dormitories.
Africa is an urban society
New cities are expanding fast in the Global South. New Delhi, Shanghai, Mexico City, Mumbai and São Paulo are being joined by Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Ahmadabad with Africa’s current large cities – Cairo, Kinshasa and Lagos – adding Dar es Salaam, Johannesburg and Luanda. Africa is now an urban society, and its leather industry should grow to serve its new cities.
Cities must avoid the automobile sprawl of 20th century cities. Security cameras on public transport allows tanners to battle for a higher penetration of leather in the seating, with little worry over vandalism. Leather wins over competitive materials on durability, performance, sustainability, wellbeing (that important issue of biophilia) and aesthetics.
Lessons from history
From AD700 to AD1000, Cordoba in southern Spain flourished as the richest, largest and most civilised city in Europe. Arts and the sciences, poetry, philosophy, technologies including leather and silverwork, astronomy, music, irrigation techniques, mathematics and financial management all flourished. Jewish, Islamic and Christian communities lived and worked closely together. Muslim scholars brought Greek philosophy to Western Europe.
The urban theorist Richard Florida argues that successful cities must be creative: “These cities leverage the talents and ideas of their creative residents to catalyse innovation, economic growth, and social progress.” The leather industry used exactly this cauldron of ideas in Cordoba to evolve a confusion of new leathers. Alum and vegetable-tanned, butter soft to bone hard, tooled and gilded. Colours, terminology and many important named leathers come from this one location.
This needs places to meet and exchange ideas. In the early 1970s, in Santa Croce sull’Arno in Tuscany, I had an account in a little restaurant in Via del Bosco, which I think was Antica Trattoria Be (is this the same one I knew in 1974?). There was always someone who wanted to talk about leather – the processes, the craft, the machines, the artistry. It was hard to leave without being inspired to make better leather.
Santa Croce is an industrial town but with easy links to Florence and Pisa where great ideas are always in the air waiting to be caught. This is what Florida calls the “quality of place” – a mix of the built environment, the people and the vibrancy of “street life” and general living.
Café culture and third spaces matter. Attitudes about how and where we work changed after Covid. Increasingly we see city offices converted into housing, and with more retail and hospitality arriving in soulless city centres and offer greater opportunities to mingle and meet.
In cities overwhelmed with concrete, metal and glass, natural materials matter, so expect to see leather in gadget covers and interior design for all these new meeting places. I watch the designer @billambergstudio on Instagram and regularly see dramatic new uses of leather.
Leather furniture of all sorts will be needed for cafés, restaurants, conference rooms, hotels and homes. Clothing will need to fit with climate change and the new less formal dress worn to offices. Lots of soft leather should be involved.
The urban leather world will be a challenge, but it could offer a bonanza to tanners who take it on.