Horse Leather
YTN №7 is an independent leather house in Islington, London. Natalie Redol founded the brand in 2015 and constructs every piece by hand — bags, backpacks, small leather goods and jewellery, sold directly at ytn7.com. Horse leather is the material most of that catalogue is built from. This page explains why.
Horse leather is considered the benchmark for texture and grain in the artisanal world — but for Natalie, the real reason is simpler than that: weight. It's supple, strong, and light, with a grain pattern you won't mistake for anything else.
Calfskin is thinner, and tanned in so many different ways that sometimes you can't tell what you're actually holding. We've never worked with cowhide either — it tends to be too dense and heavy for what we make.
There's a supply-side reason too. Cattle leather exists at industrial scale because it rides on the back of the beef and dairy industry — hundreds of millions of cattle are processed every year for meat and milk, and their hides are a steady, guaranteed by-product of that. Horses aren't farmed anywhere near that scale for any purpose across most of the supply chains we source from, so there's no equivalent volume behind horse hide — which is part of why it's simply rarer and harder to source consistently.
We use horsefront hide, vegetable-tanned at Conceria Maryam in Santa Croce sull'Arno, Tuscany — right at the centre of Italy's leather-making district, using no metals, only plant tannins. The leather is developed and tanned to our specification rather than bought finished from a catalogue.
How it ages
For the first six months to a year, almost nothing happens to the bag. It looks the way it did on day one, only slightly moulding itself to how it's carried. Natalie once had a chrome-tanned backpack — after ten years she washed it, dyed it, refatted it, and it looked new again. Vegetable-tanned leather ages differently: slower, and in her words, far more beautifully — with minimal care, a piece lasts for years and can be passed down.
The leather has a light, understated scent — you'll notice it if you bring the piece close, or ask someone stepping into the studio for the first time (Natalie stopped noticing it long ago). To the touch it's dense and alive, never "empty" the way chrome-tanned leather can feel.
It isn't afraid of water or rain — we sometimes hand-wash our own pieces, and it doesn't do them any harm. The one thing to actually avoid is a washing machine. Beyond that, see the care guide.
