Field Notes: Hong Kong and China

On route to Paris Fashion Week ‘24 Founder and Creative Director Jessie Wong travelled to China to visit the tannery where our signature Deer Nappa arrives for finishing. Jessie caught up with tannery CEO Edward Ma, witnessing first-hand how the legacy of NZ Light Leathers's finishing process lives on offshore.

In 2019 Timaru-based New Zealand Light Leathers closed the finishing arm of its tannery. This little-known producer of the world's finest deer nappa had—for decades—been the go-to for the likes of Prada and Hermes for the production of luxury handbags.

The closure posed a problem for us, we rely heavily on deer nappa for the majority of our collections. The material allowed us to apply garment-making techniques to our designs, giving Yu Mei bags the utility that modern women now demand in handbags.

More importantly, the Light Leathers team had become part of the family. Their generosity in supplying a homegrown brand like ours had given us our start in life. In the end, this strong relationship kept the dream alive. Light Leathers was still involved in the first part of the tanning process, the pickling, and were gracious enough to reach out to trusted industry contact Edward Ma to grade and colour the South Island skins.

Based in Guangdong Province, China, Edward had worked alongside Light Leather's Barry Parsons for over ten years. Barry trusted Edward to take on the Light Leather recipe. After a year of consultation and refinement between Edward and Barry's team, the sample skins arriving in our Wellington studios were the familiar, buttery soft leather Jessie had handcrafted her first 500 bags with.

As a collection goes to the sampling phase, nothing compares to visiting our tanneries and seeing the colours produced first-hand. Unlike digital printing on paper materials, colouring a skin is an iterative process that takes time and precision. There’s no print preview.

Edward and his team have quickly become close friends of the brand, and after dozens of Chinese tea breaks, we said zàijiàn (goodbye) to the tannery, knowing the quality of our deer nappa is in safe hands.