This black with navy and red stripe fashion wallet was in pieces after years of love...
A good friend and co-worker of Zac had a beautiful wallet his wife had given him from an internationally known, high-fashion brand. In doing our research, we found this wallet still sells for over $300 if you can find one (yes, that is used) and originally would retail from this company for over $500. The outside of the wallet where the stripe was attached had failed stitches that ran and pulled through the leather. This in effect ruined the wallet to the point of no repair.
The inside of the wallet had held up nicely over the years and formed well to the cards being used. Like most high-fashion wallets the "leather" on this wallet was minimal. It was very thin (almost as thin as my knife) with a backing of the liner fabric. The pockets were stitched well, but again were mostly the nylon type liner fabric with a leather piece at the top and then topstitched. Due to the materials used and the fact it was machine stitched made it impossible to repair. We tried and the stitching just pulled through it. With new materials, this probably wouldn't have been an issue, but again this wallet was loved by its owner and was a well-used item in his EDC (Everyday Carry) arsenal.
After having a conversation with him we decided to utilize what we could salvage from the bi-fold wallet and create him two slim wallets. One for him and one for his son. We were able to use the "stripe" as a notes holder on one side and the original liner was repurposed and used in the notes pocket. We stayed with the original colorway of black, red, and navy blue using Wickett & Craig top-grain leather that was cut down to 1.5oz, Conceria 800 Toscano - Fuoco for the accent cardholder, and Vinymo MBT Thread - Navy #18 in size 1 for the hand-stitching. The edges are burnished and then painted with black edge paint to mimic the original edges of the wallet. We also stamped the serial number from the source wallet on the front as an homage to where the inspiration and pieces came from.
This was an amazing learning process and we enjoyed being able to compare our products to one of the top producers in the business. We feel that, while ours might not have the "name" associated with it, we compare or are even better in our source materials, product quality, and ingenuity. All of that and our customer received two wallets with brand new base materials and a lifetime stitching guarantee for less than 1/4 of the original retail price. Ken, we hope you enjoy these as much as we did being able to recreate them for you!
-Lloyd Leather Co.
Rugged & Refined