Niche brands raise the bar on luxury with their quality and craftsmanship

As luxury brands evolve into global powerhouses and lifestyle empires, consumers have started to question the true meaning of luxury. With this in mind the industry has welcomed a host of niche brands intent on recapturing the fading ideals of what luxury should represent: artisanal craftsmanship, high quality materials and the creation of specialised products.

"The word luxury has been overused and misused in the past decade," says fashion industry PR veteran Mesh Chhibber. "Just because something is expensive does not mean it is luxurious. In many ways we are returning to the European tradition of making things with detail and care, with artisans and small ateliers," says Chhibber.

Frustrated by badly made and poorly designed products, Chhibber teamed up with artist and handbag designer Sofie C. Guerrero to launch Peau de Chagrin earlier this year (the label's name is taken from a novel by 19th century French author Honoré de Balzac). Specialising in functional objets d'art made by the finest European artisans, each piece is designed to be handed down from one generation to the next.

"Many expensive leather accessories are not made as well as they used to be and there is an educated audience that wants an object that looks beautiful and is well made.

"We have been travelling around Europe searching for individual craftsmen who use traditional leather-making techniques. The process of making things properly is slow but we want to work with artisans who maintain the tradition and knowledge of European craftsmanship. The difficulty of finding craftsmen with knowledge and skill means we only intend to release two or three leather objects/accessories a year," says Chhibber.