The back office of local leather goods brand Pegai is where high-end purses go to die. Designer, director, and self-appointed demolisher Volkan Yilmaz, who operates on TikTok under the pseudonym Tanner Leatherstein, uses his lifetime in leather to educate luxury-good consumers about the craftsmanship of their most expensive accessories.
“People like leather, but they don’t understand it enough to make comfortable choices when they’re shopping for it,” he says. “I clearly saw that I could use social media to share my knowledge and some of my passion about the stuff, which might help people learn about leather.”
One of the first luxury items to fall victim to the bag destroyer was a $1,700 Louis Vuitton briefcase. The brutal dissection resulted in a poor review from the leather expert and more than 800,000 views on TikTok.
After Yilmaz takes a leather knife to bags, he uses a seam ripper and then applies acetone to strip the leather of any coatings and dye to reveal the quality of the rawhide underneath. Occasionally he sets fire to strips of leather, cremating the final remains.
“Algorithms know what people like or want to watch, which is controversial things,” he says. “Controversy especially happens amongst the bigger brands where there are people that love them and people that hate them. They start fighting.”
The Turkish native grew up working in his family’s tannery in the northern region of Anatolia. The same building where Yilmaz learned everything he knows about leather is now Pegai’s production facility, and its daily processes are overseen by his brother. He says a “green card-lottery win” is what brought him to the States. He first landed in New Jersey and then moved to Chicago, where he got his master’s degree and started a career in consulting, which he hated. Soon after, he was driving taxis to make ends meet. “I always had this itch to go back to leather since I moved here,” he says. He started selling rustic hand-stitched wallets on Etsy. Sales quickly picked up, but the two-hour sewing process was too slow to meet demand. “I called my brother: ‘Maybe you might want to just change our building slowly into a shop and start making these for me.’ ”
Now Pegai produces wallets, purses, and backpacks. And by late summer, Yilmaz is planning to launch a brand-new line of high-quality leather purses marketed to a clientele seeking the look of the luxury purses he destroys but at a price more reflective of the quality. This new line, branded under the name Tanner Leatherstein, will be produced in Spain, next to the same studios where Prada and Celine construct their own goods.
Since his first video, Yilmaz has torn apart dozens of pricy bags at the seams. Name a brand, and the craftsman has probably dissected one of its products for the enjoyment of his near 1 million followers. “As a principle, we don’t accept bags from any brand,” he says. “We buy them, and we do an independent review. That’s the concept of the channel. I want to stick with that.”
Now that he is getting recognized, Yilmaz purchases most of his bags online to maintain objectivity. He strives to make a high-dollar luxury purchase each month, and he stocks up on designer bags when he travels to Europe. Commenter requests are how he determines his next victim. The only purse he can’t quite get his hands on is the notoriously exclusive—and even more notoriously priced—Hermès Birkin.
“Everyone says they want to see a Birkin. I would like to see it, too,” he says. “We’re not there yet. I still have the most respect for Hermès for the quality of leathers and craftsmanship practices they still keep. No other brand is.”
Except, he hopes, his own. “Buying and selling is about trust,” Yilmaz says. “Once you trust the person or brand, it’s an easier decision.”
This story originally appeared in the June issue of D Magazine. Write to [email protected].
Author
