How We Harvest, Leaf Characteristic and Production Process.
Each piece is ethically and cruelty-free handcrafted from teak leaf leather, giving each piece its own individuality, pattern and color. Each leaf has its own unique pattern and depending on the age of the leaf, its own color variation, making each piece in the THAMON collection one of a kind masterpiece. (The wages paid to each harvester and employee follow the norm and laws of the land).
How we harvest
The leaves of the teak tree are harvested by the local community who are mainly involved in agriculture. The harvesting process is relatively simple as we use leaves of the teak tree for environmentally friendly purposes. The leaves used in our products are of the highest quality and are handpicked by our Quality Control Manager.
The farmers are paid fairly according to the standard and laws of the land, they also have the free will to reject, negotiate or accept any business project proposals.
Leaf Characteristics
Why teak leaves? A very good question asked by our customer! Teak leaves has many strong properties that makes them the perfect leaves to be featured on any bag.
- Durability - Teak leaves is extremely durable for a vegan leather, it can withstand pressure and it is water resistant.
- Individuality - The color and patterns of the leaves from the teak tree varies from one another. Every leaf has their own unique pattern giving them their own individual characteristics. Younger leaves tend to have brighter shade while older leaves tend to have darker.
- Environmentally-Friendly - Most importantly, we use the leaves of the teak tree because it is environmentally friendly, ethical, decomposable, bio-degradable and cruelty free from any of the animal skin leather.
- Cruelty-free - We strongly believe that we should never hurt animals or planet in the name of fashion. It is one of our main goals to encourage people to have a vegan lifestyle.
- Lightweight - Vegan leather from the leaves are 30% lighter than genuine leather, which makes you forget you are even holding it.
Production Process
Let's start our production process from the beginning.
- First, our Quality Control Manager hand picks the leaves of the teak tree to ensure and maximize the quality of the final product. Collecting the leaves reduces the number of dry leaves that fall from the tree. This reduces the cause of forest fires when the dry season comes earlier and longer than usual due to climate change.
- Then we boil and soak the leaves with non-chemical solutions to improve the flexibility of each leaf so that it is ready for the manufacturing process. After that, we bleach and dye the leaves by hand.
- After adding bleaching and color process, they are glued onto the fabric sheet. Then, the entirety of it is laminated to improve its water repellent properties and durability.
- The final step is the manufacturing process, collaging and attaching each leaf to fabrics and treating the leaves with an eco-friendly recycled polymer to create the final product. The leaves are placed on the fabric using the art collage technique, creating exquisite patterns and shades of color.
The entire manufacturing process is done by professional craftsmen with more than 20 years of experience, and the final product is once again observed by our Quality Control Manager before it is ready for sale.
Read more about Vegan Leather Blog : https://thamon.co/blogs/news/what-is-vegan-leather-and-why-you-should-switch-to-it
