At first glance they might look like stones, polished and stitched together to form a delicate pattern that makes up a web. Yet they are leather, processed and treated in innovative ways to achieve different textures and shapes.This is the Solé bag by Polène, a Spanish brand that has patented this particular processing to optimize the production process, making it more economically and environmentally sustainable.

 

What look like stones in fact are instead decorative elements that are derived from production scraps, that is, those scraps of leather that are not large enough or good enough to be used in the construction of bags or accessories. Instead of throwing them away, the scraps are melted together in a process that resembles the process of vulcanizing leather, which allows the leather to be melted and then cooled by giving it a specific shape, in this case that of sand pebbles polished by the sea.

 

The resulting pebbles are then used as part of an intricate handmade net pattern using the macramé technique, which has as many as 240 leather beads and 120 knots for each bag.