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How long should a leather bag last?
Short answer: the leather outlives you, the handle does not.
A full-grain leather bag, used three or four times a week, shows no structural wear before fifteen years. What fails first, almost always, is the handle attachment: a rivet or a stitch that takes the full weight of the bag several thousand times.
| Daily useDaily use | Occasional useOccasional use | |
|---|---|---|
| Leather | 15 to 30 years | beyond 30 |
| Handle attachment | 4 to 8 years | 10 to 15 |
| Lining | 6 to 10 years | 15 |
| Zip | 5 to 10 years | 15 |
A handle reattachment costs between 40 and 90 EUR depending on the construction, and takes an afternoon in a workshop. A relined bag comes back for another decade. Both are cheaper than the bag.
Corrected-grain leather, the coated kind, ages differently: it does not patina, it cracks, usually between year six and year ten, and it cannot be repaired. If a bag is described only as « genuine leather », that is often what it is.
Written by a workshop that repairs about sixty bags a year. We also sell them, which is worth knowing when you read the above.
