BellaNaija
November 2016Lagos’s quietest leather house finally gets its due
About Penchant Signature
Eleven years from one room.
Penchant Signature is a leather and Aso-Oke atelier in Lagos. We have made bags from a single workshop since 2015 - for friends, for colleagues, then for shops, now for partners across West Africa, Europe, Canada, and a small number of cities further out.
All our operations come from our current location. Every piece you carry was cut, stitched, and finished by people you could meet, in a building you could visit, using materials we can name.
Yewande Fatowore.
Founder portrait
I started Penchant because I couldn’t find somewhere that could build a bag to my taste.
I trained as a designer, but the workshop is where I belong. I sit with the cutters most mornings. I check every order before it ships. I still keep the first piece I made - a boxish ankara bag, uneven stitching on one side - on the shelf in my mother-in-law’s house, because it reminds me what it feels like to begin.
Penchant has grown slowly on purpose. I have turned down work that would have stretched the atelier past what we can deliver our best on. I would rather be small and right than big and in apology. The bags that leave this room are made the way I want my own bags made: built to age, finished with care, and signed off by the hands that made them.
If you ever want to visit, write to me directly. The atelier is in Lagos, and we welcome our partners and clients in person whenever we can.
Yewande Fatowore
Founder · Lagos, Nigeria
One room, six hands, no shortcuts.
We work from a converted ground-floor space in Lekki. Pattern-cutting on one side, stitching and finishing on the other, a small office at the back. Production capacity is deliberate - somewhere between sixty and a hundred pieces a month, depending on complexity. We can do more, but we choose not to.
Atelier interior
Six people work here. A master cutter who has been with Penchant since the second year. Two senior makers who run construction. A finisher who handles edges, monogramming, and quality control. Two apprentices in their second and third years. And one person who keeps the books, the calendar, and us moving.
Most days start at eight with tea and a five-minute review of what’s on the bench. Big orders get production photos sent to the partner once a week. Small orders go from cut to packed in three or four days when the calendar allows.
The pace matters. A bag rushed is a bag returned, eventually. We would rather take an extra week than ship something that we wouldn’t carry ourselves.
Eleven years, in figures.
11Years in operation
6People in the atelier
6Private label brands
100%Made in Lagos
A few things we hold to.
Stated plainly, in case you’re deciding whether we’re the kind of brand you want to carry, wear, or commission.
Materials
Provenance is not a marketing line.
Pure leathers come from tanneries in Tuscany and Spain we have worked with since year two. A premium vegan leather alternative is available. Aso-Oke is hand-woven by named weavers in Iseyin. We will tell you where any material in your bag came from, by name, on request.
Pace
Careful is the only way we know how to make things well.
A piece takes between fourteen and forty hours to construct, depending on size and complexity. That number is not a marketing claim — it is the actual time, on a wall chart, that we use to plan production. We don’t believe in factory pace for hand-finished work, and we won’t pretend otherwise to win an order.
Honesty
If we can’t make it well, we’ll tell you.
We turn down briefs that don’t fit our craft. We tell partners when an order is going to slip, weeks before it does. We will refund or remake any piece that doesn’t meet our standard, no questions, no forms. Trust is harder to build than a bag, and we don’t want to spend ours.
Place
Made in Lagos, for the world.
Penchant is a Nigerian atelier and we are not interested in pretending otherwise. The materials, the makers, the design point of view — all of it is shaped by where we are. African luxury doesn’t need to be exotic, regional, or “inspired by.” It just needs to be good. We are working on the latter.
A few mentions, over the years.
We don’t chase press, but we are grateful when our work finds its way into thoughtful coverage.
Spice TV
2024Featured in coverage of contemporary Nigerian design
Where would you like to go from here?
About is the long version. The pages below are where the work happens.