Bill Amberg
Listening to Bill Amberg talk about leather instantly makes you want to touch some. The softness of it, the vast range of different skins, the longevity, resilience, versatility, and the fact that it’s the ultimate by-product and so should be made as much use of as possible. Which Bill does. “Nobody’s ever asked us to do something in leather that we couldn’t,” he says.
In the new Westfield centre, Bill Amberg’s shop sits in the luxury Village area next to shops like Gucci and Prada.
His bags certainly are shiny, luxurious and expensive but his roots lie in traditional craftsmanship and all his products have a fundamental practicality that sets them apart from the wares of his new neighbours. A Gucci dress, for instance, is rarely about function, but an Amberg bag is never just about form. Bill served apprenticeships in various different crafts and with a natural talent for making things, his empire has evolved in several directions, spanning a retail arm, a big interiors business and a cult following in Japan, all from his Notting Hill workshop, studio and shop.
It all started as a hobby when he was growing up outside Northampton, the UK’s leather centre. Bill came to W11 in 1984, when his first London address was Westbourne Grove. Choosing Chepstow Road as the location for the first shop 10 years later was simply laziness, he says. After a brief stint in Powis Square, he moved to Kensal Rise in the mid-90s, when his wife Susie Forbes (then deputy editor of Vogue, now editor of Easy Living) was pregnant. Now they have three daughters, aged 12, 10 and seven, and the flagship Chepstow Corner store opened three years ago.
Just as important to his business as bags is its interiors arm, which takes commissions for everything from leather walls, doors and floors to tables and desks. “Leather floors are amazing natural insulators,” says Bill. “They create incredible warmth. I’ve just put it in my kids’ playroom because it’s quiet, easy to clean and warm. Plus there’s no dust.”
Potential uses for leather are countless and the Amberg team is used to unusual requests.
They’ve covered telephones in leather. Once they covered a loo seat. And the latest project is a collaboration with Penguin, a set of six leather-bound Classics that are about to be Christmas favourites. The titles are covered in a vegetable-tanned water buffalo skin from an Indian tannery that only uses fallen animals. “It’ll wear beautifully, all the leather will curl around the pages,” he raves. Also, he’s excited about his new bag, a handbag called Opus that’s the star of the Westfield store. “It’s a completely hand-made leather-lined bag that’s taken ages to evolve. It’s beautiful with fantastic pocketing and a nice function. I’m inspired by 1930s bag interiors with pockets for everything, and of course the things people carry round with them today are very different – so the Opus has pockets for phones, cameras, pens, documents and everything.” Lots of his bags are clever like that. There’s a weekend bag for the business traveller who doesn’t have time to unpack, which is exactly the size of a folded shirt, a pair of trousers and a pair of size 12 shoes, and unzips all the way round. Carry-on dimensions, obviously, with a secret but easily accessible document pocket, and all in the softest of leathers. Clever.
For Bill, it’s all about the materials and he’s a big fan of vegetable-dyed skin. Mostly he focuses on around 12 different materials, spanning lambskin, vealskin, cowhide and water buffalo as well as stingray and ostrich. And ageing well is an important factor - a Bill Amberg bag is always designed to improve with age, and to last forever. Another thing he’s into is Britishness, making things in this country using traditional methods. He’s just launched a range of canvas bags called Selvage, which he emphasises as very English, sturdy and practical. “It’s a simple, knockabout, indestructible canvas and leather bag that’s made in England using the very best English materials.”
The famous Amberg papoose, the snug sheepskin baby carrier that’s de rigeur for the most stylish of Notting Hill parents, is typical of the Amberg longevity – it might seem like a decadent purchase given the relatively brief lifespan of its single function, but the ever-practical Amberg doesn’t agree. “It’s not at all short-lived because you hand it down. I made the original one for Esme 12 years ago and it’s now carried five or six babies and is still going strong. At some point it’ll go into an attic somewhere and be dug out again for grandchildren.” The commercial version has been adapted to pass all European standards and now sells all over the world. Really, it’s £325 very well spent.
Amberg’s girls are all long finished with the papoose and have graduated to handbags. “They get cast off handbags from Susie and it makes me slightly nervous that already they all walk round with leather handbags.” But of course they do. Who wouldn’t, with Bill for a father?
www.billamberg.com