Ladies leather shopper braided, Braun

From supple soft buffalo leather with a good grip, this shopper is woven in one piece, entirely without stitching. This demanding, purely manual production takes its time, and so it can take up to five days until such a feast for the eyes is braided from the narrow leather straps. Since the bands are slightly nuanced in color, an interesting color effect is created in the leather weave, which, along with the two weave patterns, makes for a lively surface: "Two Tones of Colour and Curves," as Allan K calls it. Worth mentioning, moreover, are the handles: they are specially round braided, so that they lie comfortably in the hand or on the shoulder.

The leather shopper is unlined, but comes with a removable linen bag, which has two slip pockets and a zippered compartment. The canvas bag is trimmed with leather at the opening and can be closed with a zipper. Practical: leather shopper and linen bag can also be used separately.

The Belgian label Allan K is considered a specialist in bags and shoes made of hand-woven leather. Founder Alain Kadic sums up the passion for his company and the products in one sentence: "Braided leather is in my DNA." No wonder, since the company's genesis dates back to the 1960s, when his father Ivan Kadic, an engineer with an inventive spirit, developed a spiral cutter that could cut a thin strip of several hundred meters from a leather hide. Many of his inventions, including an automatic leather weaving machine, soon find their way around the world.

In the 1980s, Alain Kadic, now an engineer himself, follows in his father's footsteps and follows the trail of the machines to India. Here, the craft of leather weaving has a long tradition. After working with various leather weaving companies for several years, he finally founded the Allan K brand in 2012 and from then on had his designs manufactured in Madras. The timeless, classic shoes and bags made of woven leather are handcrafted there, and depending on the model, this can take up to three to five days. The leather for this is still cut on the machines that his father developed at the time.