We spend our whole lives crossing thresholds.
Some of them you can see: a new house, a road, a separation. Others you never see at all. One morning you wake up and you are simply not the person you were a month ago. Nobody announced it. You crossed, and that was that.
I made this bag thinking about the thresholds that give no warning. About what you take with you when you cross, and what you leave on the other side. Because you cannot cross with everything.
It is short. Shorter than it looks in the photographs, and some people mind. I did not make it that way by accident. A gate is not the size of the whole house. It is exactly as wide as you need to pass through it, and no more.
The shape is a gate. I sculpted it into the leather with heat and pressure, with my own technique. Leather does not give in easily. You have to hold it, press it, turn it, until it understands what you want from it. This one took many rounds before the gate stayed in it and did not leave again.
The whole gate is on the inside. From the outside you see only part of it. The rest you see alone, when you open it, and nobody else does.
Fully lined in fine lamb leather, so it is soft on the inside. Hand-stitched on the outside, one stitch at a time. Neodymium magnet closure, worn on the shoulder.
This is not just a bag. It is an object that reminds you that you have crossed thresholds before, and survived every one of them.
One in the world. When it goes, I do not make it again. Cut, stitched and finished by Alexandra, in Arad.
