A Stitch In Time

SM02 Sabra Mottram is one determined lady. It’s the launch of Mottram’s Winter 09 Collection and it’s freezing, but why would a woman who’s not afraid to spend 18 hours straight hammering tiny holes in hides be intimidated by a little snow?

Sure, she may have had to leave her last business card on the windshield of the car she hit on the way over – may have had to leave her own car sideways in the street and run madly for the Gallery Life and Styles with a dozen leather handbags buffeting around her, like so many feathered tomahawks, through the wild night – but isn’t that what fashion’s all about… the glamour?

This isn’t any sort of comment on Mottram’s driving. Sabra is a perfectionist, a self proclaimed “anal retentive,” as she confessed to me – now to all of you – twice during our conversation: once when I asked how a rotary cut black leather fringe could be executed with such inhuman precision; and again when she explained how the almost imperceptible seam allowance on her appliqués was only managed by running her machine “one stitch at a time.”

Such attention to detail, along with her top quality, vegetable tanned, leathers and custom made dust covers, more than justify the bags’ $350 to $500 price tags.

Each bag comes with its own unique story, name, and identity card. The ‘Firenze’, a luxuriously soft, red nappa leather hobo style, was snapped up right away. Even the pulls of its ribbon lined zippers riffed on its Fleur de Lys theme.

Besides personalities, most of the bags come with matching ‘Airporting Bags’, designed to be a perfect fit for those plastic Ziplocks now forced on us before boarding.

Sabra’s father and grandfather were hunters, and she grew up in Calgary surrounded by photos of relatives smiling next to “splayed out carcasses.” Though it’s hard to picture her edgy blond crop and skinny black jeans squatting next to a campfire, the designer is carrying on the family tradition in her own way.

Mottram has an endearing familiarity and healthy respect for her material of choice, and “won’t work with any animal I wouldn’t eat.” This explains why the ‘Man Bag’, a hunky black fellow with a certain masculine thickness, is made of crocodile embossed cow. I watched her handle the supple grey skin of the ‘Mel B’ bag with the same gentle authority one might use when helping an elderly aunt out of a chair at Christmas dinner. An odd comparison, perhaps, but leather is an intrinsically human fabric – each pelt demanding a unique balance of strength and compassion.

Maybe it was the wine, or maybe, for the small band of us madmen who braved a blizzard in the name of fashion that night, it was a kindred warrior spirit, but Sabra’s goal of “world domination of the handbag market” suddenly seemed not so impossible… as long as she keeps going ‘one stitch at a time’.