Why Straps

In the summer of 2023, a fox took fancy with my camera strap. I was sitting down alone when a fox approached me and started tugging on my strap that was hanging off my camera. The encounter ended with my leather strap being ripped into two.

At a gala in Singapore, I saw a camera hanging from a shoulder. In a sea of handbags on shoulders and watches clasped on wrists, the strap stood out to me. I had a daydream in a place that prizes efficiency, and in the dream I saw room for a better way to carry cameras.

When it was time to create, I worked exclusively with the finest Italian full-grain leathers—the same materials the product would be made with. The leather's value meant every cut and stitch I did require absolute focus. Over a few months, prototype after prototype emerged from the dining table. The edges grew cleaner, the proportions more refined, until what I was making was were no longer prototypes, but a version of that object in my dream.

There is a beautiful tension that I built into Yoke's designs. 

Titanium, a modern marvel of lightness and strength, is combined with leather, a material relied upon for strength over millennia. The stitching is another fascinating contrast. Modern threads, like those used for ballistic protection and spinal implants, pay tribute to cords made from plant fibres over 5000 years ago in Egypt. While millennia separate them, their principle is identical: tightly woven fibres for strength. 

I bring the materials together with a 2000-year-old two-needle hand stitching technique. This Roman technique creates the slant pattern of the thread, that is only visible on a closer look

Yoke will always maintain the spirit of a gift. When my closest friend got married, I made him the strap from my dream for him to carry through the day, with one key difference. For the first time, I chose to hand sew the stitches, a process took hours. I stitched over two meters of thread along 75 centimetres of black Italian leather, precisely measured to his preference. The impracticality of producing the gift, and the lack of obvious signs to show for it, was how I expressed my sincerity. 

You will likely never see a yoke in person. But if you do notice the strap with the line, do say hi, for it is a small group of recipients of Yoke.

Yoke is the continuation of the lineage of straps that came before it that held the instruments for survival and art. Thank you for reading the story of Yoke. I hope, reading more about it and holding it, you'll love it as I do.