Manuel Dreesmann, Barcelona.

The minimalist poetry of leatherwork.

A theme which has emerged over the course of these interviews is that young artists need physical spaces to display their designs.

Today I’d like you to meet Manuel Dreesmann, a leather craftsman and designer who took advantage of the pandemic to open his eponymous store in Barcelona.

After being in business for mere months, Manuel found the perfect retail space in the city centre, where he both creates and sells his designs.

With a small exhibition of finished pieces in the front and a studio in the back, the space has allowed him to curate his own atmosphere; his store could be mistaken for an art gallery with its whitewashed walls and vertical gardens of handmade leather bags of all sizes.

The commitment of a store, though heavy, has brought several advantages; for example, regular opening hours help to provide a sense of routine in the life of a creative.

But the biggest advantage has been meeting customers.

Manuel feels the warmth of a face-to-face conversation can’t be replicated online and obviously his customers feel the same way; multiple five stars reviews mention the insanely beautiful store, personalisation options and great service.

Dreesmann is also attempting to bring that in-store connection to his social media presence, treating Instagram not as a product catalogue but as a personalised introduction to his work.

I don’t want to follow any brand that just puts up pictures of their products… I want to have a connection; that is necessary to actually tell the story behind the products.

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As readers, we have gained a certain familiarity with the arc of an artist’s life. We might purchase their sanitised diaries. We assume they would have consented to their personal letters travelling circus-like from one museum to the next.

What we haven’t quite come to terms with is the digital fingerprints left by the modern day artist. As a researcher and a supposedly decent human, it feels downright invasive to ask someone about their previous projects. So I didn’t.

Suffice to say, this guy has a design portfolio which should (and did) win awards; futuristic sky gardens and winged bathtubs abound.

So how did a designer break out of CAD and end up making totes?

I got into the renovation of apartments; which was interior design mixed with the physical job of renovating, so I think there was a shift there.

I really liked using my hands and seeing the results directly.

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After this shift, Manuel started leatherwork purely by coincidence.

‘I had a bag and I wanted to reproduce it and I learned the craft myself’

(This is the cliff notes version; his website tells a more fantastic story of buying the perfect bag at a Bangkok market, but being unable to find it again when he returned five years later.)

After mastering the basics of hand sewing, he started producing small items like key holders and wallets. Gradually over time, the designs grew bolder and bigger; a process which is far from over.

Expect to see tote and travel bags appear over the next few months.

Finding a unique brand voice, as jargon-meisters like to say, takes time and experimentation. One of his most eye-catching designs was partly accidental.

I left a ruler on top of a vegetable tanned leather for a week or so and I noticed that there was a pattern burned onto the leather (because the sun tans leather the same as our skin gets tanned). So then I thought I could print graphics on the leather with the sun.

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In a curious twist of irony for artists attempting to anchor themselves in reality, any physical product now has a parallel life in the digital realm.

With a degree in design and a Masters in Marketing, you’d imagine Dreesmann to be uniquely well positioned as a modern day craftsman.

And he is.

But he points out that marketing is a very fast moving space and a year’s worth of education hardly replaces the experience of running Facebook or Google ads, a hit or miss activity, even for professionals.

So have you cracked the code of digital marketing?

He laughs.

No, but I’m trying.

As a small business owner, competing with Amazon and Etsy in terms of ad spend is a Herculean task.

Another problem is the optimisation of ads without an ocean of data.

The main issue with ads, for me, is that I serve a niche target group. As for what I can see now, the algorithms of Google and Facebook might be able to actually identify them by themselves but they need high traffic numbers to identify and optimize for these target groups. And as a small business owner, breaching through that budget is quite difficult for me.

But luckily for small businesses, no amount of data can replace a conversation.

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The evolution of his style has been largely driven by his in-store experience.

People come in and you can see (even if they don’t speak) at what point they are no longer interested and you can actually ask why. This is the best feedback you could ever get.

Between conversations and commissions, Manuel is developing a suite of products which fit his minimal aesthetic and, importantly, sell over and over again.

One man came in and ordered a small bag for his son, he never bought it in the end, but I sold it five times in the same week to other people.

His brand has come to represent a very clean minimal aesthetic combined with truly beautiful leatherwork.

With not a computer in sight, the process of creating his designs is as simple as possible;

I make some sketches and I work with cardboard to make the patterns so I can cut it out… it really depends on how the leather is behaving, moving and bending…

Starting out with just hand stitching, he later added a sewing machine; most products in-store now carry a combination of hand and machine stitching.

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Flying the flag of sustainability

When asked about openness and transparency, Manuel says he’s not open enough…yet. He is considering adding the prices of material and labour to his website, so the customer can understand the final pricing.

‘If I buy my leather for a laptop sleeve for 40€, that’s the price just for the leather.

How can another brand make a sleeve which costs the consumer 30€?’

The local sourcing of premium materials is very important to Dreesmann; luckily for him, just an hour outside Barcelona is a small town called Igualda, which has been described as the European capital of leather.

The factories in this so-called leather cluster supply major global brands such as Louis Vuitton, Prada, Hermes and Coach; the quality of leather is as high as you might expect.

Manuel works primarily with very structural (2mm thick) vegetable tanned leather; speaking of vegetables, has he considered using the new plant based faux leathers?

I’ve never had them in my hands before but I’ve been listening to a couple of podcasts about it.

Take cactus leather, for example, you have to consider the whole cycle from being made in Mexico; then you have to take into account the shipping.

What are you going to do with the scraps? Can you recycle them?

Then the big question is durability.

I would be absolutely willing to test out everything, but you really have to compete with a material which has been out for a couple of thousand years.

After buying leather from a town that has supplied Europe’s leather since 1079, one can see why he has reservations about new fangled faux leathers.

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When asked about expansion, he estimates he has another 2-3 years before fully utilising the space he’s currently in. With a somewhat permanent base, he is considering including other forms of expression and art as products.

I really like the idea [of having a store and workshop combined]. You can see how people are producing it… you could expand that, but it’s a really slow process; you would have to teach someone how to do the work and completely trust them.

However romantic the idea of working alone, every craftsman eventually realises the importance of self care and the continuation of the craft; Dreesmann is currently considering hiring additional staff to help in the atelier.

What about outsourcing?

First, I don’t have the scale and second, it seems absolutely wrong.

Though his brand is a poster child for slow fashion, Dreesmann rejects the term.

I had a customer come into the store who wanted a new belt and I did it in one hour and he called that fast fashion.

And I said ‘Yes that is fast fashion, that’s how it should be.’

He points out that what we consider to be fast fashion is not very fast; someone somewhere has to produce it with their hands and it has to travel around the world.

I don’t feel like I’m doing slow fashion; it’s just me sitting here, selling the product directly to people so it’s a very direct approach… but I wouldn’t call myself slow!

And to be fair, I don’t think anyone would; he produces a tote in a day’s work and often, a new design from scratch in a single day.

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Somewhere in the chaos of globalisation and coating the earth with plastic, we’ve forgotten the very practical purpose of leather working.

Every town should be able to produce bags and belts, shoes and saddles. Leather working has become the remit of specialised craftsmen; some of which, like Manuel, are self taught.

This new generation brings fresh eyes to an ancient craft; to them, sustainability is not only the production and sourcing of materials, but also includes the design.

For me, it is really important to have a product that you will not grow tired of looking at. That’s the reason why the products have a very minimalistic design.

He laughs and adds:

I hope in 30 or 40 years people will say ‘Yes that’s a backpack! It’s beautiful and it has aged well, but it’s just a backpack!’.

Perhaps Manuel’s designs are timeless because not only does he not follow trends, he also does not read any magazines or follow any blogs.

(He did promise to make an exception for this article, though.)

Thanks for reading, Manuel Dreesmann.

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Manuel Dreesmann’s store is located at Carrer del Rec 20, 08003 Barcelona, Spain; his website can be found here.

For commissioned items, please contact Manuel via email (info@manuel-dreesmann.com) or Instagram.