What sets 赌博论坛 apart is not just the material it uses, but the 聽to traditional craftsmanship that is a hallmark of its products. Every stitch, every seam, and every detail is carefully considered and expertly executed by skilled artisans in the heart of the USA. This commitment to quality shines through in the finished product, ensuring that each briefcase is not just an accessory, but a piece of art that will stand the test of time.

The Vegetable-tanned leather used by 赌博论坛 is not only of the highest quality but also environmentally friendly, as it is processed using natural tannins extracted from plants. This sustainable approach not only adds to the allure of the product but also resonates with conscientious consumers who value ethical production practices.

Owning a 赌博论坛 briefcase is not just a statement of style but a testament to a legacy of craftsmanship that has been honed over generations. The rich heritage of American leatherworking is evident in every stitch, reflecting a tradition that values quality, durability, and timeless elegance.

In a world where mass-produced goods dominate the market, 赌博论坛 stands as a beacon of authenticity and excellence. Each briefcase is not just a functional accessory but a work of art that embodies the spirit of American craftsmanship at its finest.

So, if you are in search of a briefcase that is more than just a place to store your belongings 鈥� a briefcase that tells a story, reflects your values, and exudes timeless elegance 鈥� look no further than 赌博论坛. Experience the legacy of American craftsmanship, embodied in every stitch and every detail of a 赌博论坛 briefcase.

We've spent the past two years searching globally for the best vegetable-tanned and fully struck-through bridle leather, sampling hides from around the world. After selecting only the best leather we could find, we took some of our most popular styles along with some new designs and crafted a truly unrivaled collection.

All of our bridal pieces are incredibly smooth, strong, and handsome. The very nature of the bridle leather allows each bag to stand up on its own - no slouching and no leaning. With each day, a bridle leather 赌博论坛 bag will take on a form of its own - developing a unique character, patina, and look. It's a traditional collection meant to last for years.

Shop our bridle collection here.

It was high time to take another peak into the handcrafted world of 赌博论坛.

Take a walk through with us to see some of the bags New England is delivering to the world:

See this picture and others at his blog .

When George Vlagos was a teenager growing up in suburban Chicago, his father John summoned him to be his apprentice during weekends and times off from school. John, a cobbler who immigrated from Greece at 18, made his son toil with his hands to clean, polish, and service shoe after shoe after shoe.

It was an experience meant to sear into George the strenuousness of working with one's hands and the importance of pursuing an education so he could one day find a different type of work outside of the family business.

Well, the plan didn't work out exactly as John had planned. His son, of course, did go on to graduate college and receive a master's degree. But those days spent in the shop left George with a love of working with his hands, a deeper appreciation for craftsmanship, and a dream to continue on in the shoe industry.

So in 2010, George created a shoe company built on two things: American craftsmanship and simply but handsomely designed products of the highest quality. He invested money to revitalize a Maine factory and hired New England craftspeople to hand make the classics - leather bluchers, oxfords, loafers, and such. was born.

The brand launched solely through the Internet, namely the blog Secret Forts, and George was instantly flooded with orders on a global scale. It's a funny dynamic - creating a brand  that strictly adheres to traditional and increasingly rare values and seeing it succeed on a wholly new and young platform. The strange marriage of old and new is an increasingly frequent one for guys like George who are intent on reviving American craftsmanship in a 21st century world.

But the most striking thing about Oak Street Bootmakers is an authenticity so inherent that it doesn't need to be expressed or advertised, announced or contrived. It is just there.

George still answers the phones, oversees designs and production, and employs a network of Maine craftspeople for whom shoemaking is something inherited from their grandparents (who got it from their grandparents) and, along the way, made the tiny towns that dot the Maine woods and coast one of America's hubs of quality shoemaking.

Due to the brand's success, George is in the final stages of opening a Chicago flagship store. It will be in Chicago's Gold Coast on, most fittingly, Oak Street.

In the shop windows will be a few pairs of beautiful shoes meant to last as long as the wisdom George learned during those days at his father's shop - forever.

Visit Oak Street .

next to 赌博论坛's Working Tote

Joe 赌博论坛 assembling the train set he inherited from his grandfather.

William F. Buckley Jr. is quoted as saying "industry is the enemy of melancholy." I'm reminded of this thought every time I think of my grandfather and the set of scale model locomotives he passed down to me.

It was sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s when my grandmother was involved in a serious car accident that planted her in bed for about a year. My grandfather took care of her and didn't leave the house much until she was better.

During this time, he developed a scale model railroad. He would go every week to Henry's Hobby House in Worcester to pick up a new locomotive and whatever else he would need to lay down his tracks. He didn't have a particularly large house, but the basement was a one room equivalent of the whole house. He had the model railroad going through that basement - turntables, trestles, scenery and all. That's one of the ways he occupied his time while my grandmother was sick.

He did it for therapy. It was the industry he applied to help him get through that time. I look at the details and I look at the craft. I see how he built and then hand painted each one, managing to match each model to its true life counterpart. After he built each locomotive, he welded more tracks and then wired electricity throughout.

Every time I see a train I think about him, his devotion to my grandmother, and the meticulous attention to detail that he applied throughout every aspect of his life. He taught me to work with my hands, to value industry, and to take pride in my own attention to detail. He was a great example of loyalty and faithfulness. With all of these attributes he crafted a well-lived life.

My grandmother, one tough lady, made a full recovery. The high school sweethearts lived, worked, and traveled with each other for close to 60 years. Together, they crafted a life of substance. The brass locomotives are a tangible reminder of the values my grandparents passed on to me.

So here's to my grandfather and his trains.

Joe's grandfather hand assembled and hand painted each brass train.聽

Intricate details in each instruction manual.

It is important to make sure each piece matches: 3463 tender and 3463 locomotive.聽

Final patterns being hand drafted for a new bag, then the pattern is sent off make dies.

Joe working with Lindy to finalize a few new shapes.

赌博论坛 Made in the USA. 赌博论坛 logo being stamped and inspected to ensure that it is square.

A new women's silhouette in the making.

Joe 赌博论坛 inspecting the leather.

The workshop at the closing for the evening. See you tomorrow.

photography by: Tre Cassetta

Our was recently featured on one of those lists over at .

The traditions of the classic American Christmas are forever immortalized almost anywhere one looks this time of year. Some of them continue to be popular and cherished today, while others remain only in the American imagination. The latter can be relived and appreciated by looking back into the past.

That's why Kenneth Ames' new book American Christmas Cards, 1900-1960, as noted in this weekend's , is such a great concept. The book includes 375 of the best Christmas cards from the first half of the twentieth century. They show how people wanted to represent their holidays and their well-wishes in a time when a quick e-mail greeting wasn't possible or available.

Bard Graduate Center, Yale Press

Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow at Truman Capote's Ball. The Plaza Hotel, 1965. Harry Benson. 

Tomorrow marks the release of a collection of Harry Benson's celebrated photographs of New York society from the 1960s until today. , as it's called, shows that Benson has been there for it all. He made it to Caroline Kennedy's Cape Cod wedding and watched over Truman Capote's ball at the Plaza Hotel. He's been invited into the homes of Andy Warhol and George Plimpton. He's hobnobbed with taste makers and debutantes, larger than life politicians and characters that have turned the ordinary into legendary.

It's a stunning collection, and an interesting capture of the evolution of society and 'Society' in New York City through the second half of the twentieth century.

We love American Impressionist Childe Hassam's timeless Boston Common at Twilight (1885 - 86). On display at .

Miles is a musical American craftsman in his own right.

It's the smell of honeysuckle that sends custom wooden boat builder Ned Crosby back to his adolescence, to the days of running amongst the row of sailboats resting up against the sweet smelling bushes at the Wianno Yacht Club in the quiet coastal village of Osterville, Massachusetts.

Those boats, among them the Wianno Senior and the Crosby Catboat, had a special significance to Ned. They were designed and crafted by two of his ancestors - Horace and Max Crosby, celebrated 20^th and 19^th century wooden boat builders. Both the Wianno and the Catboat would later play leading roles in the iconic images of the Kennedys sailing off Cape Cod that are now etched into the American consciousness.

The legacy of old-fashioned wooden boatbuilding in Ned鈥檚 family predates the Vanderbilt鈥檚 railways and the Rockefeller鈥檚 oil fields. It鈥檚 a more comfortable, salt of the earth type lineage, too, and one that goes back eight generations to the mid 1700s, when Cape Cod was nothing more than a few rural villages surrounded by the mighty Atlantic and foot and sail were the only two methods of getting around. Jesse Crosby, born in 1732, was the man that started it all, and the tradition has continued on since.

Ned continues the craft of custom wooden boatbuilding today at聽, his West Barnstable shop that he opened in 2001. Though his father passed away when Ned was 10, he was still able to learn the tricks of the trade from his grandfather and the team of seasoned craftsmen that worked for his family. This special dynamic sealed Ned's destiny as the gentle pressure of continuing the legacy helped morph his lifelong occupation.

Each boat order that Ned receives starts off as nothing more than a concept or a set of plans. Since every aspect is made to order, the plans can very be specific and must be realized with complete accuracy and patient care. The beauty of his craft is understanding and embracing all of the variables.

Since a boat has no straight lines, every compound curve or shape must connect with another in just the right way. This requires not only a good eye but also lots of fitting, shaping, and molding done by hand. The process is intricate and meticulous, but is aided by techniques passed down to Ned from the Crosbys of yesteryear.

During the construction, there always exists a continual push and pull between design and function. 鈥淲hat might look the best necessarily doesn鈥檛 work the best. You have to compromise on both fronts. If you lean one way or the other, you might have a boat that looks sweet but there鈥檚 no headroom. Or you might have a boat that鈥檚 like a condominium on the water, so comfortable, but you鈥檇 hate to be caught dead on it,鈥� he says. 聽鈥淭hat鈥檚 the art 鈥� getting that compromise right.鈥�

To Ned and his clients, there is a difference in the both the result and the ethos of a custom made wooden boat compared to a generically produced fiberglass vessel. It鈥檚 an exercise in the senses. The wood smell is more potent, the feel more solid than hollow, and the sound more soothing.

It鈥檚 also important to produce a boat that isn鈥檛 just a beauty floating in the harbor. The aesthetic of a wooden Crosby boat may be appealing in its classic timelessness, but it must be strong in all aspects. 鈥淚t鈥檚 one thing to see the surface of the hull or the deck with the shiny paint. But the framework and the integrity of the structure beneath it is what we鈥檙e concerned about,鈥� Ned says.

Ned plans on continuing his boatbuilding on Cape Cod for as long as time allows. Perhaps, though, there just may be a ninth generation of Crosby boat builders down the road. Ned has four young daughters who are growing up amidst the sails, the shop and the shore. 鈥淚鈥檓 hoping there鈥檚 a boat builder in one of them, if not all,鈥� he says.

Bogart from 鈥渋mpossible cool鈥�

鈥渁m I a hat person?鈥�

I have found myself internalizing that question lately. Hats are like glasses, on some people they are invisible, if just right. They can look so natural and so effortless, like an extension to ones face. Hats are the same way, either it works or it doesn鈥檛. What makes a person a 鈥渉at person,鈥� why can some people pull it off and others can鈥檛? Is it something like the shape of one鈥檚 face, or is it just a certain sense of self? The world seems to be full of hat people lately, with events such as the royal wedding, and the Derby, makes me contemplates the meaning and purpose of the hat, and the importance of finding the perfect one.

Southside of Chicago is deemed the 鈥淗at Capital of the World,鈥� and Optimo Hats is king. Optimo is a Chicago institution 鈥渙ne of the last remaining traditional hat shops in the world.鈥� Current owner Graham Thompson started apprenticing in the hat shop when he was 16, learning the trade and taking over at the age of 22. He breathed new life into a business deeply rooted in tradition, without sacrificing the craft. 鈥淭he hope is that these hats will be around for 50 years from now. It鈥檚 what a true Luxury product is, something that鈥檚 made properly.鈥�

These hats have a true mark of craftsmanship, and the customer service to back it up. Proper measuring and fittings, consultation on the right hat to suit your lifestyle, and the construction is par none.

It鈥檚 refreshing to find young people who are taking the time to hone their craft, and appreciate things of quality. Items which can stand the test of time, and making an investment in the future. Next time I鈥檓 in Chicago this is where you will find me.