How did my leather addiction start?
Before Covid, I would travel once a year with my sisters-in-law to Copenhagen, for a week-end trip. In Iceland we call this Housewives’ Leave.
The term Housewives’ Leave derives from the early 1900s when wives and mothers stayed at home full-time without the amenities of modern-day homes. Running a household, often with 8-10 children, was more than a full-time job, what with cooking, cleaning, sewing, mending, not to mention doing all laundry by hand. At that time, the communities organized tours for women, an economical holiday away from home, to give them an opportunity to recuperate with other women before returning home to start all over again. These trips were often more than just a weekend tour, and sometimes they were to destinations abroad. You can imagine that the participants looked forward to these trips!
Today, we still call trips like these Housewives’ Leave, although the circumstances have changed.
The first leather coat
On one of these trips with my sisters-in-law, we went to a street market. It was a crisp spring morning and the sun was out. The perfect weather to bum around and see if we would find something of interest. And find I did! I found a leather coat, a big coat, almost like a trench coat, that had certainly lived a former life. The lining was torn and frayed and would have needed massive work to repair, but the leather was soft and supple, and still going strong. Something inside me told me this was an item for me, so I bought it without hesitation.
The coat was transformed to cushions
Like I said, it was a big coat. And when I came home, I began taking it apart, piece by piece. One of my daughters had recently moved into a new apartment, so I sat down and arranged the pieces back together as cushions. It actually turned out that the leather was enough for four cushions. Her children and the dog haven’t always treated these cushions with respect, but this wonderful raw material doesn’t complain. Once in a while I give it a good coating of leather grease, and it looks like new.
The rest is history
When working with the first leather coat I fell in love with used leather. The fact that it has lived a previous life and has character is extremely important to me. But equally important is the fact that it would otherwise probably end up in a landfill. That’s why I’ve now decided to use only raw material that is no longer of use to its owners. It may have cigarette burns, the pockets may be torn, or the style may simply be outdated. It makes no difference to me because I design around the imperfections anyway.
My daughter’s cushions are in the picture in the heading, others can be seen on www.gudrunborghildur.is/pudar