The tote reached our bench on a Tuesday in March. Bought in 2017, carried almost every working day since, and by the owner's own account never once cleaned.
We photograph everything before we touch it, so there is a record of exactly what came in. Those photographs are not flattering.
What was wrong
The handles had gone first, which is normal. Nine years of hand oil had turned the underside of both handles almost black and slightly tacky. One handle had stretched about eight millimetres longer than the other, so the bag hung crooked.
The base corners were worn through to the fibre on three of four corners. This is where a tote spends its life, set down on floors and pavements and train station tiles, and it is always the first structural failure.
The zip pull had snapped off, leaving the slider intact. The lining had a tear along one side seam roughly the length of a hand, almost certainly from something sharp carried loose in the bag.
And there was a stain across the front panel, dark, roughly circular, about the size of a saucer. Coffee, we assumed. The owner confirmed it later and said it happened in the first year.
What we did
Handles came off entirely and were remade from new hide, cut from the same part of the back so they would behave the same way. We matched the dye by eye against the aged bag rather than against the original recipe, because the original recipe would have come out far too light.
The base corners were rebuilt with new leather patches skived thin at the edges so they sit almost flush, then stitched by hand following the original stitch holes. You can find the repair if you look. It is not hidden and we do not try to hide it.
New zip pull, matched hardware. Straightforward.
The lining was replaced in full rather than patched. Patching a lining tear almost always fails within a year because the surrounding fabric has aged too.
Then the whole bag was cleaned, conditioned and left to rest for four days.
What we could not do
The coffee stain is still there.
Eight years of oxidation had set it into the fibre permanently. We could have lifted the top layer and sanded it back, but on a full grain hide that means removing the grain itself, and the patch would have looked worse than the stain and aged differently forever after.
We told the owner this before starting. Her reply is the reason we are writing this up at all. She said the stain happened at her daughter's graduation and she would rather keep it.
Nine years in
The bag went back out in April. Total repair time was eleven days, most of which was waiting for dye and conditioner to cure.
What struck the bench most was not the damage. It was how little the leather itself had moved. The panels were sound, the grain had deepened into a colour we could not reproduce with dye if we tried, and the structure was true. Everything that failed was a component, and components are replaceable.
That is the whole argument for buying one good bag. Not that it never wears out, because it will. That when it does, the wear happens in the parts we can put back.
Send any Strade bag back to the workshop at any age and we will quote for repair before we start. If we cannot fix something, we will tell you that first.
