EVERY STITCH HAS A PURPOSE: Hermès-Trained Leather Artisan Béatrice Amblard on bespoke craftsmanship and reviving American leatherwork

Episode notes

In this episode of The Trades Show, host Briana Ottoboni sits down with Béatrice Amblard, the only Hermès-trained leather artisan in the US working under her own label and the founder of April in Paris and Heirloom Leathercraft, inside her San Francisco atelier. Their conversation traces nearly five decades in leather — from the moment a sixteen-year-old Béatrice, steered toward the trades by a French school system that didn’t know what to do with her dyslexia, walked into a leather classroom and felt every one of her senses wake up — the scent of wax and hide, the benches worn smooth by generations of students — to the four years at Hermès that shaped her, where she learned that quality is non-negotiable and that every stitch has a purpose.

Béatrice shares the philosophy behind her bespoke work — that real luxury is quiet, singular, and made to be kept and passed down — and walks through the arc of her career: leaving Hermès in 1988 to start April in Paris with nothing, building a one-of-a-kind custom accessories practice, and being pushed into teaching by students who would not take no for an answer, a leap that became Heirloom Leathercraft, the only formal school of its kind in the country, where she has trained more than a thousand people in fourteen years.

She is candid about the realities behind the romance — the tanneries that have all but vanished, the quality of leather slipping as mass production took hold, the physical toll that has her working fewer days, the guilt of burning a piece that did not meet the mark — and genuinely hopeful about where craft and technology meet, how AI can help a maker launch a business and how the fast-paced tech world keeps sending her students hungry for something they can make with their hands. Whether you are a maker, a small-business builder, or someone craving a creative outlet beyond the screen, this episode is a masterclass in building a bespoke business without compromising on quality, preserving a trade by teaching it, and finding a whole life inside the work.

The Trades Show is an interview series on location with modern artisans exploring what it means to be human: the ability to create with our hands.