Leather information

Hello friends,

I am telling you about leather.

Reader Henry G wanted to know about leather.

Alright so people are using Fabric often, yes? Most often for clothing, but sometimes other things like a couch or a teddy bear or a table cloth. There's a lot of options because fabrics was something we got right to work on as a species, which is prolly upsetting for dudes who want history to be a story about two chiseled dudes screaming at each other with swords until one of them died, thereby justifying how the most proactive thing they can imagine is having a big tantrum, but you pretty much gotta have fabric to have civilization unless you live somewhere that is soooooo warm all the time and even then there's ticks and things. A material that is very popular in the sense of people thinking it is really cool is leather!

"how is leather different from the regular stuff a shirt is usually made out of please" WELL a shirt is usually made out of cotton which is a very nice plant whereas leather is made out of the skin of dead animals. The main animal to do this with is cows because we're already killing loads of those anyways for hamburger lunch. Technically I think you can make leather out of any dead animal but I imagine the leather from animals like chickens and fish is quite low quality or we'd see a ton of it? Although I think you can buy shark skin jackets so perhaps the problem is just size. "Does that mean I can make clothing out of you, Ryland?" It does indeed! You would probably go to some kind of jail for people absolutely everyone is afraid of or maybe even just get set on fire on pay per view but you could do it, although I would politely ask that you do not. Aside from the unpleasantness you would experience, I would really prefer not to die and if I do my skin is to be turned into plant fertilizer or given to my partner for their own leatherwork or possibly taxidermy. I could be pillows? Pillows with a face?

Anyways, because making leather mostly involves an animal not being able to outrun you we've had it longer than a lot of other fabrics, although I imagine there's probably a lot involved in making the kinds of leathers we are accustomed to seeing? One of the main reasons I guess this is that the primary color for leather is black, which I don't think cow skin usually is? It would at least have dots and splotches like normal cows do if that was the case. Here is some stuff they make out of leather:

JACKETS

A leather jacket is, above all other things, worn so that you can look cool. As you may have seen in the images of the outside world they show you in The Facility, leather jackets are a big thing of fashion and characters in movies and tv show who are meant to be Totally Badass. It looks like a regular jacket except tougher and more black color, or maybe they make it a more fun color, leather can be any color as far as I know using dyes and things so I am again sort of unclear as to how black emerged as the main one? I think a leather jacket can be worn for Practical purposes if you are needing protection from wind or cold and for some reason a normal winter coat just won't do. I literally do not know if leather is better for cold than a huge winter coat or if leather just got invented faster. You should be very careful about buying leather jackets because even though people wearing them in Fiction look very cool the coolness is not actually located inside the jacket it's very conditional on a lot of other factors being in play like just the horns part of a symphony. When you buy a leather jacket to look cool in but are not actually cool or capable of convincingly performing coolness you look 1 million times goofier than in normal clothes. To be clear you don't necessarily have to have a particular body type to pull this off you just can't be looking around like hiiiii does everyone like my leather jacket and are you afraid of it please do you think I am strong at punching thank you 😊 Like best case scenario you come off as a dweeb and worst case you come off as a school shooter.

SHOES

Leather shoes are pretty neutral of a thing, it's a pretty normal material to make shoes out of so if you are wearing leather shoes nobody will think you are trying to be Big Mr. Motorcycles. There are all kinds of leather shoes from loafers to big boots for cold time to thigh high boots for Cool Time, all of this is allowed and good.

GLOVES

These can be very practical for if you are working with your hands or in the cold, and there's also a kind with no fingers on them for if you want to protect just your palm. I think that's a situation of motorcycle? And sometimes being in a band? I think it's nice for holding a guitar? OR maybe you just hate your fingers. I can't tell your how or why to buy stuff.

PANTS

Much riskier than the jacket because you are going to look either pretty hot or deeply bizarre in these. I don't think there is any situation where these are practical, these are exclusively for fashion and if you are constantly looking around seeming worried about if everyone is impressed by your legs it's going to go weird. I guess maybe these are good for cowboy? But lady equestrians never seem to wear these and I don't see why they'd be wearing inferior pants to cowboys considering they are equally Doing a Costume.

HATS

This is maybe good for cold but probably mostly about telling people that you do cool kinds of sex that the mayor is mad about. Maybe not the mayor where I live but a sort of platonic ideal Joe Quimby mayor, he does NOT want you making those smells!

SHIRTS

Absolutely deranged, only for cool sex people or dancers, I think if you are going to pull this off whether or not you can pull it off is a question you should not even have the ability to ask yourself. You gotta be walking through the world with no idea someone could ever think you are a drip.

SEX COSTUMES

So I think you can sort these clothes pretty much in order from least to most inherently sexual and the highest level is just like straight up sex clothes where there's like a big zipper that opens on your butthole or whatever.

COLLARS

You can wear these in a not super sexual context but its pretty unlikely if you are a human but they make these for animals and as far as I know they don't feel one way or another about it. I have never asked a dog but I can't imagine there's any kind of clothes that make one dog more attractive to another but probably some that make one less, we put them in some humiliating fits.

FURNITURE

We make chairs and couches with leather which is very nice, it can be very comfortable unless its super hot in which case these become insane and horrible to sit on. The best version of leather chair is the kind where its shaped like an arrowhead and its got a million dimples in it with little metal buttons for some reason? I don't know why that happens but whenever I see it im like yes...this is what a grandfather would have. If I had a grandfather he would for sure own this and he would tell me something so fucking wise while he sat in it.

BOOKS

Sometimes books are made out of leather which has got to be from kings and queens times, there is no reason other than you are a big pervert to be doing that now. It's okay if you are a big pervert, but everybody else is just using like very strong cardboard which is nice and doesn't smell like anything in particular.

So another thing that happens with leather is that it is kind of expensive sometimes but you can get a false leather made out of plastic. This used to be considered just tacky and it was called pleather and people made fun of it and then they said hmmm actually we are calling this Vegan Leather and people decided oh this is actually cool now, and good. Like people still make fun of it some but you can say "vegan leather" and sound cool depending on your resting coolness level but theres basically no way to say pleather in a cool way. Its okay if you love this stuff and wear it and sometimes eat a little piece as a treat, you're actually never obligated to tell people exactly what fabric your clothes are made out of and if they ask you and you say "I don't know" that actually sounds cooler than saying leather.

Thank you for reading my big leather email! If you would like to find out about something, tell me and I will try to already know about it.

Love,

Ryland Duncan