We made an Alma in split leather. And neither you nor I want to let it go.

In The Lab we don't show you what already works. We show you what's being born. And right now there's something being born that we didn't see coming.

The question was simple: what if we try split leather?

I wasn't going to decide it from a spreadsheet. So I did the only thing I know how to do when a material sparks my curiosity: I took Alma —the first bag I ever imagined in my life— and made it in split leather. To touch it. To live it. To feel it before having an opinion.

And oh my.

What split leather is

A hide isn't a smooth sheet: it has layers. The top one, with the natural grain, is the full grain —the one we always use—. The lower one, more fibrous, with that velvety feel, is the split.

Said technically it sounds like little. In your hand it sounds like something else.

Why we've fallen in love

The feel. That soft, warm “fuzz” that begs you to stroke it. A split-leather bag isn't carried: it's hugged.

And the color. Split leather drinks in color in the most beautiful way: that fuzz makes the tones come out deeper, more alive, with a velvety depth that looks like the light stays inside. Suddenly we had a palette in front of us that set us dreaming.

It asks for its care, its little brush, its love. But there's something about it that hooks you and won't let go.

And then I showed it to you

I put the split-leather Alma in a video, half as a test, to see what you'd say.

You went wild. The “yes” was so resounding it thrilled me and gave me vertigo at the same time. Because it's one thing for me to like it, and a very different thing for you to be crying out for it.

And you know how we work: here we don't make things just to make them. We make what makes sense and what the community truly wants.

So, are we making it?

I'm not promising yet. This is still The Lab: an experiment, not a launch. There are things left to solve, tests to run, decisions to make.

But for the first time in a long while there's a new material that excites me as much as it excites you. And that, here, is the best sign that something good is brewing.

So I ask you seriously, because I'm reading you: if we released split leather… which color would you want first?