News
QP Magazine Issue 73, p15
July 2015
MEANTIME: A stitch in time
by Laura McCreddie
photos by Colin Coutts
Mia Sabel is an unlikely new one-stop shop for bespoke watchstraps
Walthamstow in East London is probably
not the first locale one thinks of for the
creation of hand-made, bespoke leather
watchstraps. However, buried in the heart of
E17 is Sabel Saddlery, where Mia Sabel –a
former marketing creative – makes just that.
“It was between saddlery and millenary,
but I don’t wear hats,” Sabel laughs, when
asked why she decided on this career path.
After completing the only accredited
saddlery course in the UK, at Enfield’s Capel
Manor, Sabel found herself mostly fixing
other people’s leather goods, while merely dabbling in strap making. It was only once
she was accepted onto the Crafted
Mentorship Programme run by the luxury
marketing group Walpole, where she was put
under the mentorship of leather goods
specialist Robert Ettinger, that she alighted
on her new line of enterprise.
“Robert really latched onto the strap
making,” she explains. “He told me to stop
doing wholesale and gave me advice on how
to improve the straps and to market them.”
The key to Sabel’s straps, she says, is the
quality of the material used. She uses British
leathers wherever possible, such as bridle
leather from Chesterfield and Walsall, and
oak-bark or pit-tanned leather from tannery
in Devon. The latter takes a year to produce.
Sabel also makes everything by hand using
traditional techniques, requiring her to
source very particular linen thread for her
hand stitching.
According to Sabel, it’s this adherence to
tradition that produces straps which are both
beautiful and hardwearing.
And, although they can be ordered online,
Sabel prefers to have customers come to her
studio for the final fit – one of her hallmarks
being the use of a single hole for the buckle
pin, reflecting a true made-to-measure
approach. Millinery’s loss is, it seems, the
watch world’s gain. sabelsaddlery.co.uk
Laura McCreddie
