Photographs: Monty Coles (For Mr. Coles’ complete photo essay on Bisonte, www.theloupe.org)
Models: Casey and Samuel, Volta Models
Words: Janice Breen Burns
Bisonte, 591 Chapel St. and 8 Garden St., South Yarra (03) 9827 2788 and 14 Howey Pl., Melbourne
Eric Wolfe makes some of the finest leather fashions currently produced in Australia. He sells top liners under his 33 year old Melbourne based brand Bisonte for roughly a third the price (at least $1000 less), of comparable French and Italian garments with luxury swingtags. A few seasons ago as leather zoomed up fashion’s hotlist, Mr. Wolfe also observed some local high street and mid-boutique brands were racking mid-priced Chinese-made leather garments far less finely made than Bisonte’s mid-line garments, but more expensive by $75 to $200.
Now, Mr. Wolfe is a quiet, modest man so his response to this is quiet and modest too: “You want to buy a leather garment,” he says with the tiniest tick of frustration; “You really should do your homework.”
Eric Wolfe.
Monty Coles
Voxfrock spent this morning with Mr. Wolfe in Bisonte’s airy South Yarra headquarters. Recent cocktail gossip about a Melbourne leather house producing fine made-to-measure biker-style jackets for less than half what you might expect to pay on the Paris end of Collins Street, had piqued our curiosity. It was obviously about Bisonte. And, there were the little matters of Milan and Paris. In June’s spring/summer 15 menswear show series, several heavy leather coats by influential brands including Prada appeared among the ubiquitous bikers and bombers and seemed to herald yet another flush of leather popularity.
Prada. Photo: www.style.com
Leather and suede being the “trend, gender and demographic transcendant” phenomena they are, often wash in and out of fashion but are rarely dropped from its list of classics. Fine quality classic leather styles can slip like jigsaw into almost any women’s or men’s luxury, casual, offbeat or high-street ensemble.
Today, in a breezy backroom of Bisonte headquarters, from a rack of leather fashions dating back to the 1970s, Mr. Wolfe picks out some classic styles similar to those clocked recently on Euro runways and in luxury fashion brands. A thick cow leather bomber style with crackled surface and shearling lining and collar. A trench coat with classic robe waist sash. A biker. A bomber. More covetable vintage coats. They read like a record of Mr. Wolfe’s 40-odd years of leather expertise and he confides, he often uses Bisonte’s archive to reference details and techniques when developing toiles for his small seasonal collections of men’s and women’s leatherwear. “We’ve perfected our own way,” he says simply.
Bisonte biker jacket.
Monty Coles
He buys Bisonte leathers in Italy; a southern region renowned for its small, family tanneries. And he keeps Bisonte’s seasonal collections deliberately compact – three or four men’s styles, eight to 10 for women – to ensure everything that is laboriously cut, carefully made and fastidiously finished, sells either off the rack or, for no more cost, made-to-measure. “You see this, this is a very fine product,” he says, flipping open a buttery biker-style jacket to reveal its sleek silk innards. “Fine on the inside and fine on the outside.”
“Fine on the inside and fine on the outside.”
His cutter slices the pattern components of each garment with a scalpel-sharp knife, one by one. Tape is fused to stress points to prevent give and stretch. Where multiple layers of leather meet at pockets and seams, Mr. Wolfe uses techniques to thin and flatten them so ugly ridges do not appear immediately or with wear on the outside. “I want every jacket to look as good in a few years…”
One heartpumpingly chic women’s jacket in black shearling is a marvellous example, a mixture of flatteringly jigsawed components, adjustable collar, subtle front peplum panel and slit pockets engineered to sit flat and smooth as silk. With a global logo swingtag, it would cost around $4000. With Bisonte’s, it’s $1599.
Bisonte black shearling.
Monty Coles
Mr. Wolfe established Bisonte in 1981 with the Who’s Who of Australian fashion for clients: Saba, Georges, Bettina Liano, Scanlan & Theadore, dozens more in Melbourne and Sydney. “We were on Chapel Street so it was easy for them to just pop in and work on what they wanted, right there, with us.” Behind him in the UK, Mr. Wolf had left a family tradition of leather production stretching back to early last century. “I started working in my father’s leather factory in the East End of London when I was 10,” he says. “My uncle had a leather factory that would have gone back to pre-war furriers.”
Bisonte sleek biker
Monty Coles
Bisonte boomed in the uber-glamourous 1980s when every girl and boy stalked about in leather bombers with line-backer shoulders and bootleg pants cut flatteringly long over stacked or high heels. It naturally dwindled as local fashion brands took their manufacturing, including leather, offshore.
These days, Bisonte still makes for R.M. Williams and is a go-to studio for creative types on special leather projects. Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin, for example, commissioned Mr. Wolfe to create leather costumes for their film Australia and their Broadway production of La Boheme. Mr. Wolfe also designed and made Nicolas Cage’s leathers for the film Ghostrider, costumes for the ensemble cast of Mission Impossible, and regularly makes for special customers such as Whoopi Goldberg.
Bisonte, in other words, is an elegant, creative little business, ticking over nicely all these years on Mr. Wolfe’s reputation for leather finesse but with no particular designs on global domination.
However. After a recent restructure, he admits he has warmed to the idea of Bisonte blossoming. An online store featuring some accessory lines – wallets and bags being made in China with no loss of quality – is coming, and there is room he says, for more fine leather garments in Bisonte’s current local production capacity.
Mr. Wolfe is on the move.
