The founder
Why does a well-made
leather bag cost what it costs?
Maison Aurelle began with a question I kept asking: why does a well-made leather bag cost what it costs? I grew up near the answer — my grandfather cut gloves in Florence — so after a year apprenticing in a Ubrique atelier, I set out to make the structured top-handle I had always wanted but could never justify.
What I learned is that the cost is mostly the name on the inside. The workshops that make the bags — in Ubrique, in Florence — charge what skilled work costs. Everything beyond that is brand. So I asked the workshop in Ubrique, the small Andalusian town that has supplied Europe's leather houses for over a century, to make one bag, properly, with no name above the door to pay for.
The result is what you are looking at. A structured top-handle in full-grain Tuscan calfskin, hand-finished by the same artisans whose work you have seen elsewhere. Three sizes, ten colorways, lifetime repair. From $325, because that is what it costs.
— Aurelle Marchetti, founder
