Slow hand: For these Vancouver artisans, hand-made means well-made Read more:
The Story: Some of the world’s best shoe and handbag designers are men — christian louboutin berlin and Manolo Blahnik come to mind — so it’s not surprising that Fiveleft, a line of leather bags with unique, hand-wrought finishes, is designed by Lincoln Heller.
He started by creating leather tool pouches out of discarded boots while working at an Alaskan logging camp, then began making custom men’s bags — and eventually, women’s — while working in film and as a graphic designer. Known for his bright colours and interesting surface treatments, Heller uses chromium-free, vegetable-tanned leather, which gives his bags their stiff, structural quality and is a better canvas for imparting surface texture and colour — a signature look he has developed over the years.
To make the bags, Heller started by using a hand-powered sewing machine; now, he owns a machine from the late 1800s called the Landis 1 — it was the first power tool he introduced to his studio. His leather and several other hand-held tools come from a tannery in the U.K. — “when it comes to saddles, the English and the Spanish are the best, not the Italians,” he says. Each bag part is cut, dyed and textured individually, a wax finish and the bag’s hardware are applied, and everything is sew n together. When he begins making a new piece, Heller has a loose idea of what the finished product will look like, but usually, experimentation with the pieces — how you tie the panels together, for instance — results in a different end product.
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