In Leather I Tust

On Friday, I was fortunate enough to visit the Tusting warehouse so see how they make their amazingly beautiful leather goods. I have been a fan of Tusting's incredible handbags for a while now, so I was extra excited to see how they are made.

As I have mentioned before, Tusting is over 130 years old and is a family run business. They're the second largest manufacturer in the UK, and each of their beautiful bags are lovingly made by a team of dedicated and skilled leatherworkers. Tusting pride themselves on using the finest quality leather for all of their goods, and this quality and attention to detail explains why they have been around for so long and why their bags are so covertable!

The whole day was so much fun. Not only was I in brilliant company surrounded by so many great bloggers, but the Tusting warehouse is, quite simply, a dream factory. I wish I could put into words how wonderful and intoxicating the rich aroma of leather is and how buttery soft each piece feels to touch, but hopefully these pictures will give you a rough idea of how amazing the whole experience was. For even more photos, visit the Swell Vintage Facebook page.

The whole gang! 

From left to right: Poppy of What I Wore Today, Lucy of Snippets of Shiny Thoughts, Jackie of Platform Princess, Becky from Push PR, Louisa of Lust & Found Magazine, Gillian of Tusting, Sarah-Hayley of Sarah-Hayley Owen, Ella of Coco's Tea Party, Matthew of Filep Motwary, Charlie of Girl a la Mode, Fiona of Save Our Shoes, Kit of Style Slicker and William Tusting

Thank you to Gillian and William Tusting for having us and for giving us a glimpse into your magical world, and Push PR for organising the trip! It was truly a great day and I can't wait for the day I own a Tusting bag of my very own.

Much love,

Frankie
Swell Vintage

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Swell loves pretaportobello

I've been a pretty big fan of pretaportobello.com for a long time now. If you haven't been there before, you're in for a treat - not only does this online fashion market stock some cracking independent brands (Dahlia, Toki and Nabi and Blush to name but a few...), but they also have a rather lovely vintage collection.

Needless to say, I was absolutely thrilled to win one of their Facebook competitions! My prize was this absolutely stunning Leonie Saliba leather bag:

Such lovely soft leather! A perfect accompaniment for any spring outfit, don't you agree? It's available in lots of different colours, but I chose 'tan' for a classic satchel look.

However, we have a problem. At the moment I'm trying to be very good with my money, but I have now seen the following things that I NEED in my life as soon as possible:

Image courtesy of pretaportobello.com

This Trollied Dolly floral dress is so Zooey Deschanel it makes me weep inside. I think it could definitely guarantee me 500 days of summer...

Image courtesy of pretaportobello.com

I cannot believe this Ci Ci dress is only £38! With all that ruffle detail and fabric, I would have thought it was double that. I love that it has an adorable bow sash too. It's all about the little details, don't you think?

Image courtesy of pretaportobello.com

The light chiffon and delicate vintage-style detail of this Maggie Cook shrug has got me smitten. I can just see softening a hard all black outfit or adding an elegant touch to a simply dress. NEED.

Image courtesy of pretaportobello.com

I've been eyeing up these Dahlia leather petal shoes for a long time, and I'm convinced they're the shoes for me. It's like wearing flowers ON YOUR FEET! Who doesn't want to do that?! And there's good news, hayfever suffers - the petals aren't real, so anyone can enjoy! Genius.

Anyway, this post has been a very long-winded way of saying a huge THANK YOU to the wonderful people over at pretaportobello.com - I love your site, I love your work and basically, I love you.

What do you think of pretaportobello.com? I'd love to know. Sock it to me, people!

Much love,

Frankie
Swell Vintage

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