The 80 year old, brand new cc20 bag.
This Cheetah skin has been passed down from Sarah’s grandmother, to her mother, and now to her. It’s over 80 years old, and was her mother’s dream to make into a bag.
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When we relaunched Maison IC in 2020, we asked ourselves what the true purpose behind what we do is. What allows us to sit in the atelier for hours not even realizing the time pass?
Of course it’s the love for the craft. The intensity that floods over us when we’re working with our hands with such precision and focus to make everything we do perfect. But once it’s all set and done, what is the meaning behind the piece we create?
We do this to make your dreams come true. To allow you to hold something in your hands you never thought would be possible. A piece that can be passed down for generations.
Sarah came to us with such a request. Here is her story...
“Sarah, come here,” I heard my mom beckon me from within my childhood bedroom. I stepped through the doorway into the shoebox room— what was once two closets had been combined into a reasonably sized room for a little girl. I joined her at the tall cream colored dresser. My old dressers had been turned into storage for my mom’s belongings, a mix of heirlooms and Dillard’s boxing day bargains. She was nearing the one year mark since her Stage IV metastatic breast cancer diagnosis.
Every once in a while, she would pull me aside to look through some of her belongings; she didn’t want to leave us with a giant house full of things to sort through. She had spent that past spring sorting through and cleaning up her own parents home before putting it on the market; I could sense that she didn’t want to leave me and my brother with the same arduous task, parsing through a lifetime of junk to find the gems. Six months earlier, we labeled all of her jewelry according to the desired recipient. Three months earlier, we sorted through some of her clothes. And now, she had something to show me that I had never before seen.
From the third drawer down, she pulled something out from under a stack of her winter tops. She unfolded the yellowed and aged tissue paper to reveal a small yet stunning piece of cheetah hide. “It was Nonna’s,” my Italian grandmother’s.
My mom always had an appreciation for furs. When I was little, I used to drag her away from the furs at the department store, crying, “what about the animals?!” Today, I have a deep appreciation for the respect that goes into crafting luxury leather and fur goods. And today, I have a deep appreciation for all of the leather and fur coats and accessories that my mom curated, some passed down to her, some scoured for on eBay, some splurged on at a department store.
But this cheetah hide, I’d never laid eyes on it. I didn’t know it existed until now. And it was my mom’s acute awareness of her mortality that called me into the room that day.
“I want to have it made into a little bag, maybe some kind of clutch,” she told me. “Just wanted to show you this... so now you know it’s here.” She gingerly folded it in half and placed it back into the drawer.
In retrospect, I don’t think she ever thought she would be around to see this heirloom cheetah hide crafted into the bag she envisioned. I think she wanted to make sure I knew about the hide, and about her unfulfilled intentions.
Six months later, she suddenly took a sharp turn for the worse. She declined quickly and passed within a few weeks. There were so many things we never got to. Trips never taken. Boxes never sorted through. Plans never actualized. But there was the cheetah hide.
A few weeks into life without her, I stumbled upon the skin while going through drawers, and remembered her wishes. Having recently crossed paths fortuitously with Camille Chetrit, I thought of her, and I thought of her father’s impeccably crafted bags that she was known to sport. So I reached out.
Isaac and Camille took this project on with more love, care, and individualized attention than I could have ever dreamed of. Their respect for the skin and its legacy have moved me; they have captured the character of three generations within this bag. Each time I carry this bag, I will also be carrying with me the memory of my beloved matriarchs.
