Inside Akris’s Rarest Material in Luxury Fashion & the Bags Made From It

There are luxury materials, and then there are materials with a story so specific, so traceable, and so genuinely rare that the finished object becomes something closer to a document than a product. Akris, the Swiss fashion house that has been privately owned and family-run since 1922, has always operated on the conviction that fabric comes first — that the material is not the starting point but the entire point. That philosophy is nowhere more evident than in the Akris horsehair, the fiber at the center of the house’s newest bag offerings, and one of the most singular materials in fashion today.

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The story begins in Mongolia, where free-roaming horses have been part of nomadic culture for centuries. The horsehair — sourced from the animals’ tails with respect for the animal embedded in the tradition — travels from there to southern England, where it is woven on Victorian looms dating to 1872. Only two workshops in Europe still practice this technique, and they produce just a few meters of fabric per day. The natural colors, black and brown, come directly from the horse’s tail; white horsehair can be dyed into softer, more seasonal tones. The resulting fabric has a durability and a subtle, irreplicable sheen that no synthetic alternative has ever managed to replicate.

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It is, in every sense, a material with a life before it reaches a loom.

Albert Kriemler — Creative Director of Akris for over four decades and grandson of founder Alice Kriemler-Schoch, who opened her atelier in St. Gallen at just 26 years old in 1922 — has always led with fabric as the primary creative impulse. The horsehair is a natural extension of that philosophy: a material whose rarity, history, and character are the design. Akris remains one of the last privately owned luxury fashion houses still run by its founding family, with Albert and his brother Peter at the helm — a continuity that gives the house a relationship with craft and material that is increasingly uncommon at this level of the market.

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The horsehair appears in two new bag styles: the Alice top-handle bag and the Anouk Trapezoid clutch. Both are available in the fiber’s natural neutrals as well as seasonal colorways that take advantage of the material’s exceptional dye receptivity. The construction transitions effortlessly from day to evening — the structured silhouettes and distinctive surface sheen read as equally at home at a lunch as they do at a formal occasion. The bags have already attracted a loyal following that includes Jennifer Lopez, Karlie Kloss, Robin Wright, and Kate Hudson, which speaks both to their aesthetic range and to the particular appeal of an object that carries this much provenance quietly.

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This is what Akris has always understood: that the most enduring luxury is not the loudest. It is the kind that takes a century-old technique, a nomadic tradition, and a Victorian loom producing a few meters a day — and turns it into something you carry without explanation.

THE HAUTE READ

Akris’s Alice top-handle bag and Anouk Trapezoid clutch are made from rare horsehair fiber sourced from free-roaming Mongolian horses and woven on Victorian looms in southern England — one of only two workshops in Europe still practicing the technique.

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