Quality
Slow is the whole point
Every piece CYFR makes begins with a skin from Heng Long — one of a very small number of tanneries in the world working with crocodile and alligator to this standard.
The tannery
Heng Long, Singapore
There are only a handful of tanneries anywhere that work crocodilian leather to this standard, and fewer still that will sell it outside their own group. This is the one we buy from, and this is why.
Singapore, since the 1950s
Heng Long is still family-run. Seventy years in one tannery means the process was never written down; it was handed over. That is what you are paying for in a skin — not the animal, the hands that finished it. These details are what seperate good skins from exceptional ones
Owned by LVMH
LVMH bought a majority of Heng Long in 2011 and has held it since. The world's largest luxury group does not buy a tannery for capacity. It buys one to secure the supply of a material it cannot source elsewhere at the standard it needs.
Vertically integrated. Fully traceable.
Heng Long controls the chain from farm through tanning to finishing. Every crocodile and alligator skin moves under CITES permit, and each one can be traced back to source. So can every piece we make.
Graded ruthlessly
Only a small proportion of skins reach the top grade. Scale symmetry, the evenness of the belly tiles, the absence of scarring and bite marks — a skin fails on any one of them. CYFR uses only that grade. It is the reason the leather costs what it does.
Finished to order
Matte, semi-matte or glazed, in a colour range that runs well past what is sold as standard. Glazing is done by hand under agate. That is the step that gives the skin a depth you cannot photograph and have to see.
The houses it supplies
Heng Long supplies the leather goods houses whose names you would expect. We are not one of them. We buy the same material and take longer over what we do with it.
The process
From the skin to the bench to you
The leather arrives already exceptional. Everything after that is ours to get wrong, so we take it slowly and we do it by hand.
01
The Skin
We buy from Heng Long in Singapore and then select by hand, skin by skin. Most of what arrives is rejected for a given commission — not because it is poor, but because the scale pattern will not run the way that particular piece needs it to.
02
The cut
Every panel is cut by hand and laid out to follow the grain of the skin, so the scale flows unbroken across a flap or down a front panel. Nothing is spliced to save leather. On the larger pieces this is why a commission waits for the right batch.
03
The stitch
Everything is hand saddle-stitched — two needles, one thread, no machine seams anywhere on the piece. It is slower by an order of magnitude and it does not unravel when a single stitch gives out. Edges are sanded, painted and polished by hand, coat over coat, until the line is level.
04
The years
A hand-stitched seam can be opened and re-stitched without destroying the panel around it, which is the whole argument for making things this way. We service and repair anything we have made, for as long as we are here.
Point A to Z
You choose all of it
Not a colourway from a set of three. The skin, its finish, the leather lining the inside, the metal, the thread, the dimensions. If you would rather not decide every one of them, say so and we will put a combination in front of you.
The skin
Porosus, niloticus or alligator — matched across panels for the piece you have chosen.
The finish
Matte, semi-matte, or glazed by hand under agate.
The interior
Chèvre, epsom, togo or suede, in a colour of its own.
The details
Hardware, thread colour, dimensions, blind-embossed initials.