Luxury Myths and the Leather Brand I Couldn't Build
Thea Elle
There was a time I believed that timeless design, honest materials, and genuine craftsmanship could speak louder than branding. It felt romantic, almost righteous, an antidote to the glossed-over machinery of high fashion. That belief did not end in flames or scandal, but faded gradually, worn away by the quiet erosion of market indifference and the relentless whisper of industry gatekeepers. Like many creatives lured by the promise of lasting meaning, I thought perhaps there was space in this world for a quieter kind of story. A story told through hands, not hype. One that was not about who you knew or how loudly your product screamed status, but about what you made and how you made it.
Before TANNER LEATHERSTEIN ever went viral for peeling apart designer bags on camera, revealing their padded interiors and brand-first economics, I was already walking the same difficult road. While he used scalpels, I used stories and stitches. Together with my partner Coco, I launched KRIS & KIKO, a small leather goods label that was born out of post-9/11 resilience and built in a dimly lit Brooklyn studio. The goal was simple but ambitious: create bags with soul. Not for show, but for the type of person who cared about detail, material, and purpose. These were not meant to be flexes or status symbols. They were meant to live with you, age with you, and reflect you.
But in the luxury world, meaning without myth does not travel very far. Despite the meticulous process, the handmade quality, and the honest narrative behind each product, our efforts were invisible. There were no stylists pulling our pieces for red carpets, no editors selecting us for “it bag” roundups, and no runway appearances to give us legitimacy. In fashion, truth does not sell unless it is presented through a recognizable lens. Without celebrity, without manufactured scarcity, and without the nod from the right people, you may as well be whispering into a hurricane.
When Craft Alone Won’t Cut It
We began humbly and with purpose, selling bags on the streets of SoHo, setting up folding tables on West Broadway, and working late into the night in our Greenpoint workshop. Our hides were sourced locally. Every piece was assembled by hand with a stubborn commitment to New York craftsmanship. We wore “Made in NY” like a badge of honor. But the infrastructure around us was already vanishing. The Garment District that had once sustained thousands of makers had shrunk to a whisper of its former self. The small factories we relied on either shut down or pivoted to mass production for survival.
By 2007, we had no choice but to move production to GUANGZHOU. It was a decision made out of necessity, not compromise. What we found there was sobering. The technical skill was impeccable, the machinery world-class, but the ecosystem did not want ideas. It wanted templates. Factory managers would hand us CELINE and YSL lookbooks and ask which logo we wanted to print. Originality was not welcomed. It was inefficient, risky, and expensive. In their eyes, making something new was foolish when the customer already craved something familiar.
They were not wrong. These factories had worked with too many dreamers like me, people who believed good design would be enough. But what the market rewarded was not design. It was recognition. A customer would more likely spend five hundred dollars on a convincing replica of a well-known brand than on a completely original but unfamiliar label. It was not about quality. It was about language, symbolism, and social understanding. They wanted the bag that told a story others already knew.
Why Skill Alone Isn’t Luxury
The lesson I learned was not a technical one but a cultural one. You can make something with precision, elegance, and integrity, but if it does not carry the right myth, it might as well not exist. Luxury is not sold through leather and stitching. It is sold through access. It is not about the bag. It is about what the bag allows you to say about yourself and who grants you permission to say it. Brands like LVMH, KERING, and RICHEMONT do not merely sell fashion. They sell belonging, validation, and identity.
You do not just buy the product. You buy your place in a narrative. Without that narrative, even the most beautiful object becomes illegible to a culture obsessed with prestige and visibility. The skills of the maker, the ethics of the process, the authenticity of the materials—none of it is enough without the sanctioned frame around it. Without endorsement, luxury becomes invisible.
The Meaning of Scarcity
What we think of as luxury is not rooted in material reality. It is rooted in mythology. That handbag does not cost three thousand dollars because it took three thousand dollars to make. It costs that much because it has been coded as desirable. As Roland Barthes wrote, luxury is a language. The value lies in what the object signifies, not in what it is. A CHANEL or an HERMÈS piece is not just a physical product. It is a symbol. It is a shortcut to identity, a cipher for aspiration, a cultural artifact of scarcity and status.
This semiotic power is what justifies the price, not the craftsmanship. You are not buying leather. You are buying the ability to speak a specific language and to be understood in the right circles. Without that, the product cannot function as luxury, no matter how well it is made.
Can Tanner’s Message Break Through?What Happened Underground
But the world is not as tightly sealed as it pretends to be. In SHENZHEN, I met Kiko, a master craftsman connected to what many dismissively call the replica market. What I discovered there was not a criminal operation but a quiet rebellion. This was a space where skill still mattered and where the artistry of bag-making still had a heartbeat. These artisans were not frauds. They were more meticulous than many so-called luxury houses. They knew the stitch count, the grain depth, the exact temperature at which leather must be folded to hold its shape.
Together, we began to reimagine KRIS & KIKO—not as a brand dependent on validation from the fashion elite, but as a brand grounded in honesty and reach. We were not interested in knocking off the surface of luxury. We were interested in preserving the soul of it. What we offered was not counterfeit. It was counter-narrative. Quality without the markup. Craft without the gatekeeping. No middlemen. No magazine spreads. Just the work and the story behind it.
Can Tanner’s Message Break Through?
What TANNER LEATHERSTEIN is doing is powerful. By dissecting bags, literally and symbolically, he forces consumers to confront uncomfortable truths. His message—that the maker matters more than the myth—is both righteous and urgent. But the industry he critiques is designed to ignore people like him. Without capital, connections, or cultural endorsement, the most honest story often fails to reach the people who need to hear it. Truth, like everything else in luxury, needs the right packaging to be accepted.
Why We Keep Making Things Anyway
KRIS & KIKO may never appear on a runway. Our bags may never be featured in Vogue or carried at the MET Gala. But we still design. We still cut, stitch, and assemble. We still care. Not because we expect recognition, but because the act of making still holds value for us. In a world drowning in logos and illusions, creating something real, something honest, still feels radical.
We make for the few who notice. For the ones who care. For those who are tired of buying symbols and are hungry for substance. Maybe someday, the luxury world will shift its focus from who tells the story to how truthfully it is told. Until then, we will keep crafting. Quietly. Purposefully. And with a kind of defiant love that does not need to be seen to matter.
