The Hunt Leather website has been hacked – well, the server it was on was hacked on Boxing Day along with nearly 200 other sites. Due to a fairly hopeless chain of circumstances (don’t believe what your web hosting company says about security or backups) we can’t restore it, and will be building a new website completely from scratch, which will take us a while.

In the meantime, if you have any enquiries please contact us at the head office on mail@huntleather.com.au or 1800 064 768, or 02 9810 6811, and we will direct you to your nearest store or arrange any mail orders directly. Our sincerest apologies!

is a Wanny di Filippo action figure!

I love Christmas. People buying beautiful special things from our stores, things we love to sell like the little Florentine hand-moulded boxes…

Amazing jacarandahs this year, doesn’t it always make you feel like summer’s really here?  And now the green’s coming through, but the carpet of jacarandah flowers is still a pleasure…. (don’t slip!)

We’ve had a frantic time, with new collections still arriving every week from Autumn Winter 2010, Spring Summer 2011 on the horizon, and corporate orders and stock deliveries every couple of days just to keep us on our toes.  And in the middle of it all, a perfect day, albeit a long one for some of the helpers, launching the Longchamp SS2011 collection.  We took a beautiful apartment in Darling Point for the day, just above the Cruising Yacht Club.  (We all wanted to move in, although I have to admit in quiet moments wondering if I would be happy there, as I would always be thinking – where’s that yacht going?  I’d like to be on it!).

The collection is stunning – but of course I can’t show that yet.  But thanks to the lovely Erica for her gorgeous shots, to Miss Chu for divine lunch, and to the crew who made it all happen so beautifully…

For years, I have waited patiently in Fausto Santini shoe stores in Florence and Paris while my mother added to her collection.  I’ve succumbed a few times when I have been lucky to find a huge enough size for my hoofs.  I’ve watched their collection of gorgeous, understated bags grow.  And for years I’ve wondered why Fausto Santini weren’t available in Australia.  We’ve heard that they’re Akira Isogawa’s favourite shoe, and you can see why – the design sensibility, the originality, the craftsmanship, the tactile leathers, you just want to keep touching them…

Fausto Santini himself was born in Rome.  He graduated as a lawyer, and practised for a short time, but his interest grew in art and design, which he studied, and interpreted while travelling around Europe.  His father Giacomo owned a shoe shop in Rome.  Loving his job as a craftsman, he transmitted his passion to his son, and Fausto started as an apprentice beside his father.

The first Fausto Santini boutique opened  in 1971 in Via Frattina in Rome, with a revolutionary and innovative collection…

We have brought out some of our favourite Fausto classics, the little Canaglia shoe, and the divine Educanda boot in stretchy lambskin (pull it up or push it down), as well as gorgeous bags in lambskin and calfskin.  You just have to touch them to fall in love.

www.faustosantini.it

New Il Bisonte collections in now, mmmmmmmmm

Gorgeous Boldrini has arrived, and is selling very quickly, so we’ve had to beg for another delivery in time for Christmas…  We love the bags, as well as the photographs by young French photographer Yann Audic, shot here in Sydney.

It’s ironic, but no matter how carefully we plan, shipments get delayed by circumstances completely out of our control and everything turns up on the same day.  We’ve just landed a huge Tumi shipment and a Longchamp shipment, and next week we’ll be receiving more Longchamp, Il Bisonte, and Boldrini, with lots and lots of gorgeous new things, including limited edition pieces in bison leather for the 40th anniversary of Il Bisonte…  watch this space!

We just love the leather in the new range by Canadian designers m0851; ‘A unique blend of minimalist Scandinavian structure, Japanese serenity and Mediterranean vitality‘.  Each piece is made in Montreal, Canada in Tuscan Vachetta leather, which ages beautifully, developing a burnished glow that absorbs scratches and scuffs.  They really are simplicity itself and we think our customers will love them…