Materials
Montesere — Materials
What we make
it from matters.
Every material we choose is chosen deliberately — for how it ages, how it is made, and what it leaves behind. We use three. We know them completely.
Our Standard
Three materials. Zero compromises.
We do not use a material unless we can trace it from source to finished bag. That means knowing the tannery, the farm, the certification body, and the environmental footprint at every step. If we cannot answer those questions, we do not use it.
01 — Leather
Full-grain.
Vegetable-tanned.
Built to last decades.
The finest leather in the world is not the softest. It is the most honest — untouched, uncoated, and allowed to develop character with every year of use.
The leather that gets better every single day you carry it.
We source exclusively full-grain, vegetable-tanned leather from tanneries certified by the Leather Working Group — the world’s most rigorous environmental standard for leather production. Every hide is selected by hand for grain consistency, weight, and natural character.
Vegetable tanning uses natural tannins from bark and plant matter rather than chromium salts. It takes longer — up to 60 days compared to one day for chrome tanning — but it produces leather that is firmer, more durable, and entirely free of heavy metals. It is also the only leather that develops a genuine patina: a deepening of colour and character that makes each bag uniquely yours over time.
We do not use corrected-grain, split, or bonded leather. We do not apply surface coatings that mask the natural texture. What you see is what the hide is.
Shop Leather BagsEvery tannery we work with holds Gold certification from the Leather Working Group — the highest environmental rating in the industry, covering water use, chemical management, and energy consumption.
Vegetable tanning is slow by design. The extended process allows tannins to penetrate deeply and evenly, creating leather with structural integrity that chrome-tanned hides simply cannot match.
No chromium, no cadmium, no lead. Our tanning process uses only plant-derived tannins — bark, leaves, and fruit — making the leather safe for the people who make it and the people who carry it.
A well-maintained full-grain leather bag does not wear out — it wears in. With basic conditioning twice a year, our bags are designed to outlast decades of daily use.
02 — Suede
The softest surface
we know how to make.
Suede is the inner split of a full-grain hide — the side closest to the animal. It is finer, softer, and more tactile than the outer surface. And in the right hands, it is extraordinary.
Softness with substance. Texture with longevity.
Our suede is split from the same LWG Gold-certified hides as our full-grain leather — never from a separate, lower-grade source. The inner surface is brushed by hand to a consistent nap depth, then treated with a PFC-free nano-coating that provides water resistance without altering the natural texture or breathability of the material.
Suede has a reputation for being delicate. Ours is not. The nano-treatment repels water and light stains without any chemical residue, and the hand-brushing process aligns the nap fibres for greater resilience. With proper care — a suede brush and occasional conditioning — our suede bags maintain their appearance for years.
We offer suede in six colourways per season: two neutrals that carry across all seasons, and four that rotate. Every colour is dyed using water-based pigments with no azo dyes or heavy metal mordants.
Shop Suede BagsPer- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFCs) are widely used in suede treatments but persist indefinitely in the environment. We use a PFC-free nano-coating that provides equivalent water resistance with no lasting chemical footprint.
Two permanent neutrals — Dove Grey and Camel — plus four seasonal colours dyed with water-based pigments. No azo dyes. No heavy metal mordants. Colour that is safe from source to skin.
Machine brushing creates inconsistent nap depth and can damage the fibre structure. Every panel of our suede is brushed by hand in our partner ateliers, ensuring a uniform, resilient surface across the entire bag.
Our suede is never sourced separately as a lower-grade material. It is split from the same certified hides as our full-grain leather — ensuring the same traceability, the same standards, and the same quality of origin.
03 — Recycled Plastic
Plastic that was
heading for the ocean.
Now it is a bag.
We take post-consumer plastic bottles, break them down into pellets, spin them into yarn, and weave them into a fabric that is stronger, lighter, and more weather-resistant than most conventional materials.
Every bag removes 14 plastic bottles from the waste stream.
Our recycled plastic fabric starts life as post-consumer PET bottles — collected, sorted, and cleaned before being shredded into flake, melted into pellets, and extruded into continuous filament yarn. That yarn is then woven into a dense, structured fabric at our partner mill in Portugal, which holds Global Recycled Standard (GRS) certification for its entire production chain.
The result is a material that is inherently weather-resistant, colourfast, and structurally rigid — properties that make it ideal for bags that need to perform in real conditions. It does not require the chemical treatments that conventional synthetic fabrics need to achieve the same performance, because the recycling process itself creates a denser, more stable fibre structure.
We use recycled hardware throughout our plastic-fabric bags: every buckle, ring, and clasp is cast from recycled brass or stainless steel. The lining is recycled polyester. Nothing new is added unless it has to be.
Shop Recycled BagsEach Montesere recycled plastic bag diverts an average of 14 post-consumer PET bottles from landfill or ocean-bound waste streams. That figure is independently verified by our GRS-certified mill in Portugal.
The Global Recycled Standard is the most rigorous third-party certification for recycled content in textiles. It verifies the entire chain of custody from collected waste to finished fabric, ensuring no virgin plastic is blended in.
Producing our recycled PET fabric generates 72% less CO² than producing an equivalent weight of virgin nylon. That saving is verified against the Higg Materials Sustainability Index baseline for synthetic textiles.
Every metal component on our recycled plastic bags — buckles, D-rings, clasps, zippers — is made from recycled brass or stainless steel. We do not mix recycled fabric with virgin metal fittings.