Making the wallet I couldn't find
A few years ago, one of my cousins had this Prada cardholder that opened from the side. I really liked the shape of it, and eventually bought an Indian version that was quite similar.
I used that wallet for years. It was not fully leather and had a fair bit of cloth in it, so it slowly started falling apart. By the time I wanted to replace it, the company that made it had shut down.
I kept using it for as long as I could because I could not find the same design anywhere. Eventually, I was gifted the actual Prada wallet, which solved the practical problem, but I still liked the idea of making one myself.
That stayed in the back of my mind for a couple of years.
This summer, I came across a leather shop in Goa and started getting curious about leatherwork. Until then, I had assumed making wallets would require a sewing machine or some kind of proper workshop setup. I did not realise that a lot of leather goods are stitched completely by hand.
Once I figured that out, it felt much more approachable.
I bought some leather, a few basic tools, and started learning. For the wallet itself, I used the Prada design as the starting point and adapted parts of a pattern from Eternal Leather Goods, a Hong Kong leather maker whose work I liked.
The first wallet took me around 10 hours.
There was a lot more involved than I expected: cutting the leather cleanly, punching stitching holes, keeping everything aligned, hand stitching it, finishing the edges, and figuring out where small mistakes start showing up in the final piece.
I made a second wallet soon after because I wanted to record the whole process for a YouTube video. That one took much longer since I was making it in phases and stopping constantly to set up shots and film each step.
While doing this, I ended up learning a lot about leather itself too. I started reading about different tanneries, how leather is tanned, the differences between types and grades of leather, edge finishing and burnishing, and why certain construction methods are used.
I have made a few other things with leather since then as well, some of which I'll probably add here alongside the video.
If you'd like me to customise something or make a leather piece for you, feel free to reach out and we can see if it's something I can make.
I'm also happy to hear from people who are curious about leatherwork and want to make something together. And if you already make things and want someone to record the process for you, I'd be up for that too.