SOMETIMES when you approach a design, you have clear idea of your objective and what the final product will be. In the case of the Paris Key Holder, however, the design evolved around the materials and took awhile to come together. While ordering a variety of brass fittings for our satchels, I had come across and was really drawn to some small, simple brass hooks. I wasn’t really sure what we could do with them—if anything—but I just really loved their form and simplicity, and thought that perhaps they might serve as some inspiration for a future project.
Roséline and I had been working on some different designs at the time, and we both wanted to create something classic in gold and white. I began researching different companies and ordering samples of white leather, but nothing really worked the way we wanted and we decided to shelve the plans until we could find the right material and design. I did, in my research, find an interesting Italian company that specialized in braided leather. I was quite taken by this beautiful white braided italian leather, and knew that I wanted to use it to create something, but just wasn’t sure what. So, I began trying to contact the company in Italy to place an order, a story in itself, involving many emails phone calls and an interpreter.
By the time the leather arrived from Italy, we had decided that we could make quite an elegant, functional key holder from the brass hook and white braided leather, although we still felt that it was missing something.
It’s funny when something is sitting right under your nose and you don’t even realise it. Roséline had, for some time, been using a simple little Eiffel Tower souvenir (that she had picked up on one of our trips to Paris), as her keychain. Quite a few people had complimented her on it over time, and I guess maybe this had stuck in my mind, but then hit me all at once, that in order to finish our design and create something special we would have to travel to Paris to purchase the actual souvenirs from street venders beneath the Eiffel Tower. And that is precisely what we did.
We hope this simple little key holder reminds you—as it does us—of the magic of Paris.
—Paul
All images, photography by KTMerry via Style Me Pretty.