It started with a challenge as we sat around the table with our tanners at their centuries-old facility. "How can we specially develop the brightest, most vibrant blue while sticking to the natural, vegetable-tanned process?"

After all, blue, according to the iconoclastic Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, is the color of “electricity and pure love.” These��two desirable yet elusive elements are found in everything we do, and��we needed them to be embodied in our new electric blue hue.��

After several tries, the �IJ���̳ electric blue was born. Its birth marked a welcome, vibrant departure from our more traditional, neutral tones. It gives��our palette a little burst of energy��without being too overbearing--like that much-needed espresso that's ordered at��3 pm on a Wednesday. It's alive, striking, exotic.��

It's also awfully rare. It's nearly impossible to find such a color because of the difficulty involved in achieving it.��Most blues of similar hue are surface treated and chemically dyed. Ours is fully struck through, with layers of translucent color culminating in a bright, natural surface.��

Explore the annals of art history and you'll find electric blue popping up throughout. Consider Renaissance artist Titian.��He insisted upon using pure ultramarine pigment in his artwork, despite its costliness and elusiveness.

Twentieth-century French artist Yves Klein contemplated the afternoon sky and was so struck by its brilliance that he chemically developed and patented��his own��now-famous shade, .��

Image Credit:��© Charles Wilp / BPK, Berlin

La grande Anthropométrie bleue (ANT 105), ca. 1960

And let's not forget Frida, whose Blue��House in the Coyoacán neighborhood of Mexico City played host to��her birth, her life, and her death. It now serves as a museum dedicated to her art.��

In bringing such a color into our own palette, we’re hoping��to capture��what Yves, Frida, and others did so well--create something��of organic, striking, thoughtful beauty that permeates not just the end result, but the means as well. It's really more than just a simple color.��

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In 1975 Toluca, Mexico, a huge indoor marketplace closed down and its fate became uncertain. Instead of allowing this gorgeous but empty building to languish and deteriorate under the effects of time, a local artist by the name of Leopoldo Flores decided to transform it into his own personal labor of love, something I find incredibly inspiring.

Both a botanical garden and a stained glass masterpiece, the Cosmovitral is a visual representation of humanity’s inherent connection to nature and the world around us. Its realization took years, as the building had to be almost completely restructured, but the artist ultimately succeeded in converting this desolate place into a vision of harmony and enduring splendor.

I’m fascinated by this massive work of art not only because of its raw beauty, but also due to the fact that it was born out of a desire to bring life back to a fading entity. Flores’s persevering creativity generated something wonderful through modernizing the dated but storied art form that is stained glass.��

from on .

Take a walk through our shop as we make a Tripp bag from start to finish.��

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Floating Points:��Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points muses on Debussy and Bill Evans in an interview with Pitchfork ��
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Each week, a member of our team picks that one thing he or she is obsessing over. This week, CEO Ellen McNulty-Brown is��loving Billie Holiday’s studio session outtakes.

Lady Day walked into Columbia Records studio in February of 1958 to collaborate with arranger Ray Ellis for her last album. ��For me, it is the outtakes included from Lady in Satin’s studio sessions that make the act of listening to this album so special. ��

Her grainy laugh punctuates the last 15 seconds of Sinatra’s “I’m a Fool to Want You”-Take One, right before she sings her thoughts to the guys in the booth. The sound of voices emanates from the booth, providing real-time direction. There is beauty in all of this for me. ��

Some might find it tedious to listen to multiple iterations of the same song, but in doing so, I think we truly get to experience the extraordinary development of an artist--exploring, agonizing over each detail, and seeking the path where perfection can be realized.

-Ellen McNulty-Brown

There's only so much traveling and working to be done. When my briefcase and duffle��are themselves decompressed and at rest, I break out my��comfort clothes.��

Soon, nights and mornings will be crisp and cool, and I'll be��spending more time with��favorite pieces of cloth: my Sleepy Jones pajamas. Sleepy Jones is the latest baby of the consummate creative Andy Spade, and it's a baby trained��to always peacefully��sleep through the night. Each pajama set��is classically designed and expertly made of the finest and softest materials. (Sounds familiar, doesn't it?)��

Putting on my Sleepy Jones��instantly transports me to a world of groggy comfort, where stress is a foreign language and I am in charge of my own��leisurely destiny. Sometimes I pretend I'm waking up or dozing off at one of my favorite hotels, settled in after hours of arduous travel. Sometimes I'm lucky enough to be doing just that. Other times I'm content in my own comfortable home, not thinking about the moment when the pajamas will be tucked away and the world will call once again.��

Shop Sleepy Jones .

Achieving perfection��is something that takes time. And that exact time is something that Bloomberg Businessweek documented as they visited��our shop recently. The final tally to make our classic English Briefcase? 465 minutes from start to finish.��

Some things are tough to handle.��(for example,��the truth--at least according to Jack Nicholson...)��

But the handle on your bag��shouldn't be one of those things, especially if it's a briefcase meant to last you day in, day out--through the good and the bad, the early mornings and late nights, the cramped seat in the back of the plane and the first class one that comes with a complimentary glass of Champagne.��

So take a walk with us as we go through the little things that go into the best handle on the best leather briefcase:��

Roll, baby, roll

Seven times. That's what it takes to get the handle right. We take a precisely��sized piece of leather and roll it six��times over until it forms a handle both taut and supple. Then we take the final layer and wrap it. Most briefcases��have a plastic, nylon, or cardboard filler. Not ours--it is 100% leather.��

Holding the bag��is something best experienced in person and many times over. As the bag ages, it becomes more attached to its user--your fingers begin making an indelible imprint into the leather.��

Impostors be damned--this is your bag and you've got the finger grooves��on the leather to prove it.��

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Positive Reinforcement��

A briefcase gets a lot of wear, as it should, and there are several stress points that usually lead to its demise. The most stressful is the point��at which the handle meets the body of the bag. Simple physics create a push-and-pull--the hand is always pulling the handle away from the bag.��
So to prevent��any separation anxiety that may develop, we take an extra layer of leather and turn it on itself. We attach it to the point at which the most wear-and-tear would occur. That little step takes a bit longer and requires more care. But its a feature so rare in today's market that we're one of the few to actually do it.��

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Setting the bar��

Proportionality, symmetry, and balance are three things that go into our designs. But they also go into the construction process��and result��in a bag with an inherently comfortable carry. In order to strike a balance, we insert a full-length metal inside��the top of the handle. This gives the bag an incredible stability and prevents sagging or bending of the leather.

The bar also helps stability when the bag is being carried with the shoulder strap. Instead of drooping upwards or downwards, the bag stays��straight from end to end.��

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Product featured:

There is a hum of activity in each of the small, coastal towns.

Windows are lifted open for the first time since September followed by the audible sigh of relief as a flood of fresh, salty air comes rushing into homes that had been shuttered -- seemingly indefinitely -- just minutes before, the insides cocooned from the effects of a long winter.

Fences are given a fresh coat of paint; beaches are swept of miscellany and debris. Store signs are dusted off and ones that say "closed for the season" are put away as if they were never there in the first place.��

With the windows rolled down and not enough tourists on the road to cause any headaches or curses, we cross over the Sagamore Bridge, one of two bridges that connect Cape Cod to the rest of Massachusetts. We're welcoming the summer with our friends Sean Hotchkiss and Justin Bridges. Both New Yorkers and both passionate about classic, beautifully made things, Sean and Justin��. We invited them to come and spend the weekend with us. Sean is originally from New England, so Cape Cod memories already exist in his mind. But it's new territory for Justin, a native Georgian:

(Photos by Justin Bridges)

With our leather bags packed with the essentials for a weekend on Cape Cod, our first destination is Osterville, Massachusetts--a small coastal hamlet home to boat builders, sailors, and tycoons alike.��

The main west-to-east drag is Sea View Avenue, a fitting name for a street that presents unobstructed views of Nantucket Sound.��

Unlike other coastal Cape Cod villages, Osterville doesn't sit just on Nantucket Sound. It sits on four bays--North, East, West, and Cotuit (most famous for its oysters)--and a river--Eel. The sheer geography, from the bays and river to two small, isolated islands, allows for quiet, secluded beaches and docks.��

(Justin takes a first peek at Osterville)

With the day still young and an open few hours tempting us with possibilities, we decide to board the Avery M--a C. Raymond Hunt-designed and E.M. Crosby-built 38-foot cruiser. The names Hunt and Crosby mean as much to boat enthusiasts as van der Rohe and Eames do to lovers of modern design.��

(Joe �IJ���̳ unties the Avery M as we prepare to leave Osterville.)��

The destination is Martha's Vineyard, specifically Edgartown, the easternmost of the five towns on the island off the coast of Massachusetts. Edgartown is a tidy, formal, quaint town. ��Along its main streets lie perfectly kept Federal and Greek Revival wooden homes, many built by 19th century merchants, shipbuilders, and sea captains.��

The first sight as we approach Edgartown Harbor is the Edgartown Harbor Light, a tall black-and-white lighthouse that sits on a thin strip of land on the edge of the downtown historic district.��Once we reach the harbor and slow the boat down, the American flag comes out, an act both symbolic and necessary.��

We caught a wedding underway at the Edgartown Yacht Club.

The harbor is still quiet. The influx of thousands of visitors and summer residents from around the world has yet to begin.��

A weekend trip by land or sea calls for one of our leather duffles.

After a late-afternoon lunch of New England favorites by the water, we stroll through the main streets for ice cream and fudge. A quiet harbor allows for an edge-of-dock moment of reflection.

We depart from Edgartown and cruise across the sound back to mainland Cape Cod just in time to walk through the evening streets of Osterville. We see a few wooden staircases. The drop to the shore from grass to sand is so steep that standing on the top step gives the impression that the stairs lead directly into the water. Once below the dunes and on the shore, we are joined only by the footprints of earlier visitors.��

The sunset is subtle and muted but still worthy of documentation. As we check in for the evening, we wonder why those chairs are facing land and not sea...��

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Johnson ventures to say, “the video, seen exclusively here, is loaded with sunbaked desert vibes, complemented perfectly by the dusty grit of a spaghetti Western and some good old-fashioned rugged Americana.”

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Our friends Sarah and Stefaan from Miles and Miles grabbed a few of our bags and hit the road down to Marfa, Texas and the surrounding west Texas countryside. We paired them up with The Window over at Barneys New York and they documented their journeys for a Barneys exclusive spring 2014 look book.��

From peeking inside an abandoned 19th century schoolhouse to pitching an overnight tent in the middle of the stark, unforgiving terrain, ��Sarah and Stefaan mastered the art of adventure travel with our bags in tow.��

Travel with them and read an interview with Joe �IJ���̳ and Lindy McDonough over at .��

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Amanda recognizes��that �IJ���̳'s commitment to quality takes these pieces to a league all their own. She writes, "This simple, traditional bag is made in entirely in New England by experienced artisans, which gives the piece a sense of place and history that a more mass-produced bag might not have."

Taking pride in your handcrafted bag will undoubtedly add to your travel experiences this Spring and Summer.

Enjoy the entire article��.

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