Become

Hi, I’m Saumya. I’m a designer and art director in New York.

All Work Design Art Direction Film Photo

Handbag design

For this collection, I wanted to fuse leather-craft and metalworking techniques, and electroplate leather, as if it were captured in metal. In the process, vegetable tanning is essential : it lends the leather the ability to be wet-moulded, and to remember its shape.

‘Become’ is open-ended. Ambiguous leather objects that suggest wearability. Through the hard, solid metal, you can see the soft, pliable leather. The end result records the transition from fluidity to rigidity, both of which the leather is capable of. Both these materials, poles apart, will age in their own ways, allo stesso tempo.

Leather becomes metal becomes leather.

Photography by Tarishi Gupta and Sambit Biswas.