RiRi
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. Zips are one of the few components we don't make ourselves. This page explains the choice.
RiRi has made zips since 1936, out of Mendrisio in Switzerland, and has been the choice of houses like Hermès and Bottega Veneta ever since. Their zips are made and tested in small batches — something most factories won't do unless the order is enormous.
We didn't land on RiRi straight away — we went through other zip brands first, painstakingly, before settling on RiRi as the standard we hold everything else to. The difference against a mass-market zip isn't how it looks, it's how it runs: tighter tolerances on the teeth, a smoother pull under load, and — the thing that actually matters years later — it doesn't loosen or start catching the way a cheap zip does after a couple of seasons of real use. We have pieces that are close to ten years old, and the zips still run exactly as they should; we're confident they'll keep going for years yet.
Hardware, more than most people realise, is what a piece actually feels like in your hands. We care about what we make and about the people who wear it, so even in something as small as a zip, we use the best we can find.
How it ages
The mechanism keeps its smooth action long after a cheaper zip would start sticking. Any finish — coloured or coated teeth — will age the same way the leather around it does. Care is minimal: keep the track clear of sand and dirt, and if it ever starts running stiff, a little wax or graphite on the teeth.
