On Design—The Swanton Billfold, part 1 of 3

The evolution of the billfold

‘I’ve always had an interest in and an attraction to the wallet,’ says Ben Lezin, founder and head of AK Salz. ‘I’ve been making wallets with our current manufacturers since I was in elementary school. It’s like trying to design the perfect chair, there’s this outward simplicity and then underneath there’s this deep functional complexity. It’s an incredibly interesting time to be starting AK Salz because we’re inside of what we see as a period of tremendous change in small accessories.’  

For our first line of AK Salz leather goods, we’ve started with the most utilitarian of small accessories in an effort to perfect and modernize the staples of a carefully designed collection. To make a clean, contemporary billfold wallet, we started by understanding the evolution of this men’s essential.

The flat billfold wallet in particular was largely born from the widespread use of paper currency in Renaissance Europe in the late 1600s. Before this, European men typically carried their valuables around their waist in a pouch. It was also around this same time that pocketed men’s pants became fashionable in western culture as well. The convergence of these two styles fueled their respective popularity and led to the Ménage à Trois of wallets, pockets, and money that you find in most men’s pants today.

In the 1950s, the invention and proliferation of credit cards created another wave of change. Card slots became standardized in every billfold wallet, and as the number of credit cards, store cards, and loyalty cards increased, wallets grew to accommodate more and more. For men in particular, wallets became a catchall for anything you didn’t want to lose. Wallets became increasingly complex, designed to hold receipts, credit cards, membership cards, coupons, cash, and even coins.

Today, smartphones are the new catalyst for dramatic changes in what we carry everyday. Much of our identity, memberships, and currency has moved from physical space to a digital one. We’d argue that beyond an id, a couple credit cards, some emergency cash, and maybe a key card to get into your building at work, you don’t need much else in your pocket on a daily basis. When we talk about ‘modern carry,’ we’re referencing this kind of conscious minimalism and efficiency.

While your wallet probably spends most of its time in your pocket, that doesn’t mean it’s not visible. Your wallet, and everything in it, can add unwanted bulk to your pockets and quickly wear out your favorite pants. Additional card slots, partitions, layers, hardware, and even coin pouches add to the weight and thickness of a wallet. If you care about how your pants fit, you should care about your wallet as well. 

Check back soon for part two of our series, 'Designing a modern carry wallet'

A close look at the Swanton Billfold

Seinfeld's George Costanza and his exploding wallet

Salz's vision for modern carry

On Design—The Swanton Billfold, part 2 of 3

Designing a modern carry wallet

With a sense of personal minimalism in mind, we designed our line of small leather accessories.

‘We wanted take an honest look at everything we designed in our line,’ says Ben Lezin, founder and head of AK Salz, ‘it was incredibly important for us to create products that fit with our own lifestyles and with a younger, modern consumer, even if it meant moving away from designs and concepts that we grew up around and loved.’

'We didn’t want to just take other wallets we liked and unconsciously inherit all of their features without questioning them, we started from a much more abstract place. We looked at the leather we wanted to use and then we physically laid out what we used each day, what we carried with us to work or out on weekends and looked at what we actually needed. That was our foundation.'

Once we got rid of all the unnecessary components, we saw an opportunity to really build around our core beliefs as a business, which is that natural looking leather is incredibly beautiful and exudes character and personality. We were left with something modern and functional that had these broad open surfaces for our leather to stand out.

From there we put attention into engineering out unnecessary thickness or material redundancy. There are a lot of brands that use really beautiful vegetable tanned leather and recognize the same changes and opportunity to carry less, but their engineering and construction is almost self-defeating. You have these accessories where every pocket or card slot is essentially another piece of leather sewn on top of another. You end up with a finished product that feels like a hockey puck.

On the exterior, it was important to us to keep thickness in the leather that makes the wallet feel substantial and maintains the hand feel of the leather. On the interior, we skive down our materials in critical areas and use liners and bonding techniques that maximize slimness alongside durability. The card pockets contain liners that minimize the wear on your cards where a thicker material or raw unlined leather would typically chafe or gum up a card after extended use.

‘No matter how well made your wallet is, stuffing it full of unnecessary clutter will eventually wear out seams and stretch leather out. Overfill any wallet and eventually you'll see the stitching, the leather, and even the contents of the wallet itself hit their breaking point. Your pants will wear down in the pockets as well,’ says Ben, ‘Our line is designed to last through years of daily use, but it’s also designed to encourage purposeful use that will further extend this longevity.’

'Throughout the entire AK Salz supply chain, from our original designs and formulas that begin in California, to the Italian tannery we use to, to the highly skilled technicians at our factory in China, back to the manufacturing consultants here in the US, we had a really open and responsive chain of communication that allows all of us to troubleshoot our designs as we zero in on what we feel is the perfect modern wallet,' Ben explains. 'Our manufacturer in China is incredibly specialized in working with vegetable tanned leather with the rare capabilities and expertise to produce a long lasting, luxury accessory. With all this communication and design iteration we’re able to take an initial concept and execute it as a finished product that will last for years and carry a strong sense of quality and timeless style as the leather ages and patinas.'

‘We were able to create a finished product that met our expectations for what kind of craftsmanship an AK Salz product should carry,’ says Ben, ‘at the same time we were able to create a product that was half the thickness of our original prototypes and of some of the other brands we looked at that also make modern, vegetable tanned leather wallets.’

The result is a modern, slim billfold wallet made from Salz's finest top grain leather— the leather with the friendly feel.

Initial sketches of what would become the Swanton Billfold after many iterations

Workers splitting leather at the Salz Tannery in Santa Cruz, 1955, photographs by Ansel Adams. After tanning, only the durable top grain was sold as California Saddle Leather. The splits below the top grain were finished and sold to manufacturers who desired a less expensive leather. By using the only the highest quality Italian leather made using Salz California Saddle Leather formulas, we are able to attain the same quality and durability while eliminating unnecessary thickness in our products.

The fine grain of California Saddle Leather

On Design—The Swanton Billfold, part 3 of 3

Finding your next wallet

Though they carry far less than their predecessors, we'd argue that the timeless style of a billfold wallet remains undiminished. 

‘Ultimately, I think wallets are becoming more and more like wristwatches,’ says Ben. ‘In the same way that smart phones have diminished the utility of wearing a watch everyday to tell the time, a wallet is becoming less and less necessary and increasingly ornamental as an accessory. But I don’t see either disappearing any time soon. There’s something inherently timeless and stylish about a wallet. It’s something you use every day in public, buying coffee, at dinner, when you hand out your business card, that speaks to your own individual style and sense of detail.’

‘There’s something personal about the wallet,’ says Rogan Kriedt, AK Salz cofounder, ‘for men a wallet carries your most sensitive or valuable information and lives in between this private and public space where you’re constantly revealing and hiding it and its contents.’

‘I can remember my dad giving me my first wallet in elementary school and how important that felt. I was suddenly old enough to carry my own money, I remember what a sense of independence and personhood I got from that. I think your wallet is always deeply tied to your own identity. A clean, good looking wallet exudes confidence.’

When accessories are made from the top quality vegetable tanned leather and designed to last, they eventually take on a life of their own. Natural leather that was once living cowskin continues to emanate warmth and beauty. The color or the leather patinas as it ages, the leather becomes worn and burnished, scars appear and disappear though use.

'When you recognize the intended load of a leather accessory it lasts longer,' Ben explains, 'We've encouraged our customers to embrace the concept of modern carry by designing this functional minimalism into our line. You end up adopting habits that make your accessories last and in the process they become more than a commodity. The article becomes distinctly yours as the leather develops its own character. To us there is nothing cooler than unique character and self-assured confidence. We think it's a very Californian interpretation of style, where imperfections and flaws are embraced as individuality and personality.'

Regardless of whether or not you could use a new wallet, your pockets will benefit some introspection. 

Next time you’re at home, sit down with whatever you use for everyday carry. Take everything out of it and lay it on a table. What did you use this past month, what did you use this past week? What are you carrying around everyday that you don’t need?

And once you get down to the essentials, put them back in your wallet. Are parts of your wallet unnecessary? Is your wallet worn out from carrying around too much? Does it tell a story?

Whatever answers you take away from this inventory are your own, but we hope it gives you a strong sense of what matters in what you carry every day. 

Style from simplicity, personality from individuality

Timeless style, modern imagination

Stitching detail of the Swanton Billfold