What Is Grape-Skin? The Unexpected Material Behind the Renen

There is a moment, the first time you hold the Renen, when you turn it over in your hands and try to place the material. It has the quiet grain of something considered. It is soft, but it holds its shape. And then someone tells you what it is, and you pause — because it began in a vineyard.

We call it grape-skin.

A material that starts at the harvest

Every year, when grapes are pressed, an enormous amount of the fruit is left behind — the skins, the seeds, the stalks. For centuries this has simply been waste. An Italian material house called VEGEA looked at that leftover harvest and saw something else: the raw beginning of a refined, plant-based material. That is what grape-skin is. It takes what the Italian grape harvest discards and gives it a second, far longer life — as the surface of an object you will carry for years.

It is, in the truest sense, made from something that already existed. Nothing was grown to create it. It is the harvest, reimagined.

Not leather — and we won't call it that

You may have seen materials like this described as "grape leather" or "vegan leather." We don't use those words, and the reason matters to us. Grape-skin is not leather. Calling it leather would borrow a credibility it doesn't need and quietly mislead the person holding it. So we say what it is: grape-skin. A vegan material, PETA-Approved, with a character entirely its own.

We would rather tell you the true thing plainly than dress it in a more familiar word.

For those who choose leather, it is certified

The Renen is offered in two materials, and the choice is yours. Alongside grape-skin, we offer a genuine Italian leather — sourced from a tannery certified Gold by the Leather Working Group, the most rigorous environmental standard in the industry. Two materials, one silhouette, one icon. Whichever you choose, the bag is the same shape, the same sculpted clasp, the same intention.

Substance, not slogans

It would be easy to put the word "sustainable" on everything and hope it does the work. We don't, because the word has been emptied by overuse. What we can offer instead is evidence: a grape-skin surface that diverts the leftover harvest from waste. A leather option held to a Gold-certified standard. A lining cut from certified deadstock — surplus material rescued from other ateliers rather than produced new. These are not promises. They are choices you can verify.

That is the difference between a brand that talks about ethics and one that can show you where its materials come from.

The Renen, made to be reached for

The Renen was designed in Dubai to be the bag you reach for first, for years — a structured silhouette with a sculpted gold clasp, the M that marks everything we make. That it also happens to begin in an Italian vineyard, or in a Gold-certified tannery, is not the headline. It is simply the truth underneath the object — and we think the truth is worth knowing.

Explore the Renen collection →