Most bags make a single choice and commit to it.
The Willow Bag makes several, simultaneously, and the result is something that takes a moment to fully read. That was the intention. Not obscurity for its own sake, but the kind of design that reveals itself gradually, where the first impression is a strong silhouette, and the second is the architecture underneath it. Like the willow itself: read from a distance as a single flowing mass, and up close, a hundred individual lines working in the same direction.
The question the design started with
We wanted a bag that carried visual weight without relying on a logo or an obvious reference point to do it. The question was, how?
The answer came through a strap system: two leather straps, layered, converging at four attachment points across the bag's shoulder. From there, the body had to respond. Squared, with generous depth and enough volume to feel substantial but no internal boning forcing it into shape. In the same way that branches find their position under their own weight, the side panels do the shaping, allowing the lengths of the bag to billow and slump naturally. Above it all, the layered straps converge into something closer to a canopy: dense, deliberate, many parts reading as one.
A choice for 8 buckles
All eight buckles on Willow are functional. Each one contributes to how the straps adjust and hold across both shoulder and crossbody carry.
It's also true that you could solve this carry system with fewer (much fewer). The decision to use eight was as much visual as it was mechanical. At the attachment points where the straps converge, the buckles cluster in a way that reads as intentional density; a concentrated moment of hardware against leather to draw the eye.
This is the territory where Willow sits: form and function overlapping to the point where separating them stops being a useful exercise. The buckles work. They also look like they mean something. Both of those things are the design.
Hardware, repeated with purpose
The finish across all eight buckles and all four signature rings is silver, consistent in tone, weight, and scale throughout. When hardware appears this frequently on a single object, uniformity becomes a decision that keeps the eye moving across the bag rather than snagging on variation.
Our signature removable rings sit at the base of the strap system. They terminate the straps cleanly when the carry length is set shorter, and in longer configurations they become the lowest point of the hardware arrangement, anchoring the whole composition. A detail that first appeared across our Sage Bag and has become part of how we consider finishing a bag.
The leather underneath it all
Top-grain leather was the material choice for Willow, and the pebbled surface that characterises it isn't applied after the fact. It comes from the refinement of the hide's upper layer — a process that evens out the most variable surface markings while keeping the underlying grain structure intact.
For a bag with this much strap movement, where leather at each attachment point flexes under load across years of daily use, that grade of hide made practical sense. Top-grain sits in a specific performance range: more consistent than full-grain, which holds every natural marking, and considerably more resilient than split leather processed from the hide's lower layers. The pebbled texture also absorbs minor surface contact marks into itself rather than displaying them.
Over time, the leather softens and shifts in character depending on how Willow is carried and what it encounters. No two will age identically.
Willow Bag
Belonging without needing to explain itself
The design notes we kept returning to during the development of Willow were sparse. A shift away from fashion as spectacle. A bag for someone who doesn't rush to define themselves.
What that meant in practice was resisting the urge to simplify. The complexity of the strap system, the repetition of hardware, the volume of the body, none of it was resolved down to its most minimal version, because minimal wasn't the brief. The brief was a full canopy. Everything present for a reason, the reasons not immediately obvious, the whole thing settling into sense the longer you look at it.