What looks cooler? Hovering your phone over a card reader waiting for the right “beep,” or reaching into your pocket to produce a beautiful piece of leather that’s grown softer and developed a unique patina with time? There’s a right answer here, and it’s the latter. At a time when cash is on the wane, carrying a wallet has itself become a statement of style and substance, not unlike wearing a hand-wound mechanical watch when you could check the time on a screen. Wallets also offer an opportunity to work exotic leathers like alligator into your wardrobe, and support artisans who continue to practice traditional techniques like saddle stitching, a process by which each thread is hand-sewn using two needles so that they lock independently, meaning that if one stitch comes undone, the whole job won’t unravel. From royal warrant-holding English heritage brands to Florentine artisans to American upstarts, we’ve scoured the..
