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.
Many people ask why horse leather. For Natalie the answer is simpler than you might expect: weight. It's supple, strong, and light, with a grain pattern you won't mistake for anything else.
We've worked with many leathers over the years — calf, cow, and others — and that experience is exactly what keeps bringing us back to horse. Knowing the alternatives first-hand is what makes it a real choice rather than a slogan. Horse hide has a character we build most of our core pieces around.
There's a supply-side reason too. Horses aren't farmed for their hides at industrial scale the way cattle are, so there's simply less horse leather in circulation — part of why it's 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.
Horse leather is our foundation, but not our whole vocabulary. From time to time we come across a material worth working with — a cow hide with the right character, a suede with the right hand, a linen or a canvas — and when it's good enough, we buy it and make a small run. These pieces sit alongside the core collection rather than replacing it.
How it ages
For the first six months to a year, in our experience, 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, in her words, ages differently: slower, and 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; to us, it has a life we don't find in chrome-tanned leather.
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.
