In my last post celebrating Bill Amberg I concentrated on craft – his use of bridle leather throughout the bags and the structure that gives them, as well as the most recent innovation of using oak bark-tanned leather that grows colour-rich and characterful almost as you watch it.

This post, rather than craft and bags, will discuss design and gloves.

It will not surprise readers that I consider my hands to be unsuited to ready-to-wear gloves, and have never found any that truly fit. Such are the excuses that a bespoke devotee of makes about his feet, shoulders and much else.

My hands are relatively broad with long fingers, but the wrist is small. Artistic hands, in the eyes of my mother; feminine hands in the taunts of everyone else.

The problem with slim wrists is that gloves are not tight enough there and so slide forward on the hand, making them feel loose all over. Even elasticated gloves aren’t tight enough. For someone that gets itchy when his collar is too big or his cuffs just a touch too short, this is an irritation.

By blind luck, I stumbled upon a solution at Bill Amberg. All his gloves are inspired by models, either modern or historical, being used out there in the world. The pair I liked are those worn by the cavalry officers that guard London’s royal palaces – you know, the ones that aren’t allowed to smile.

In unlined calf skin they are very soft and supple, yet thick enough to be warm. And they’re not just copies of the officers’ – they are produced by the same company but commissioned exclusively for Bill.

Gleefully for me, they also button snugly around the wrist. I discovered that the model is part of the reason (Bill’s driving glove, a copy of an old British model, is short and loose at the wrist, designed to be easy to put on and not constricting) but the leather is also important. The soft calf stretches more, so as long as the fingers are long enough, you can try one size smaller than normal. I downsized from an nine to an eight.

While I highly recommend Bill’s gloves – others are copies of those worn by air force pilots and fishermen – this is obviously not the season for gloves any more. There is one pair of the cavalry officer gloves on the site, if you happen to be a size 10. But they also have some left in the store in the Burlington Arcade. And if you’re lucky enough to find some you like, they’re on sale.

Otherwise, just have to wait until Autumn/Winter 2010.

Fans of sartoria will be well aware of the benefits of oak bark-tanned leather. Its denseness of fibre and yet ability to be moulded make it perfect for the soles of men’s shoes. But because it is hidden beneath the shoe, and because it is often painted, few appreciate how the leather changes colour over time.

This quality of tanned leather was highlighted by a collection of bags from Bill Amberg, and it’s one I discovered recently. Serendipitously, as a new collection is slowly arriving in store, that oak bark line currently has 30% off.

In its natural state, the oak-tanned leather is pale and creamy. Over time, it turns a rich, deep brown. This is not as a result of contact with your hands or other contaminants, just photosensitivity. It’s a lovely process to witness in a natural product – the neck leather, selected for its texture and stretch lines, slowly acquiring character and depth over three months or so.

It can, however, be a hard thing to explain to customers. You’re not buying a bag in that colour, but in a very different one. Bill admits it’s not easy to communicate, “which is why we’re polishing up and preparing a bag that can sit in the shop, to show people the final colour,” he says.

Bill also has a strip of the leather around his wrist, in case you happen to bump into him. (Among its many characteristics, the leather is one of the most benign against the skin and is hypoallergenic, which means it is often employed in prosthetics.)

Each tanning process produces a different colour – chestnut is more yellow in its natural state and turns orange, mimosa is almost white and goes very yellow. Oak, for Bill, produces the most natural, wood-like tone.

But little of any tanned leather is used for bags. This is because its hardiness makes it difficult to work with. Fortunately, Bill has a lot of experience here. Most of his products are made with bridle leather: skins that are treated with oil to give them strength and water resistance. They are also harder to work with, but Bill prefers them because they retain the structure of a bag.

“It means you can make a bag with no internal structure, no metal frame or cardboard – just leather on the outside and a coloured suede on the inside. It’s beautiful and simple and strong,” he says. That also makes the bags surprisingly light – particularly briefcases or similar designs, which conventionally have a wooden or metal frame.

These sizes of leather, and neck parts, are not usually produced by tanneries. So it takes a fair amount of planning to produce a collection like this – up to a year to commission the skins and plan production, then nine months for the tanning before anyone can start making bags.

So probably worth checking out the remaining ones in this collection.

While the term ‘manbag’ is still one that lingers, it’d be hard to deny that the stigma regarding men carrying bags has all but disappeared. One company to benefit from the loss of this stigma is UK based accessories experts, Bill Amberg.

Launching in 1984, Bill Amberg started out with a focus on women’s leather accessories, before including luggage and men’s day bags to the collection. They’ve since expanded into interior design and design consultancy, working with the likes of Dunhill, Motorola, Tate and Globe Trotter. Aside from leather bags, wallets and luggage, they’ve also moved into leather flooring. “Leather is a perfect flooring material”, Bill explains, “[It’s] Warm, dust-free [and has] wonderful acoustic properties”.

While leather flooring won’t be to everyone’s tastes, his bags are a simpler affair. There are only two collections in total, the modern traveller collection and the selvage casual collection. Made in a Turkish factory, the main material used is calfskin leather, although nylon, canvas and herringbone wool all make an appearance. Like Nigel Cabourn and Margaret Howell, his bags are very popular in Japan, where they retail at the likes of Beams and Tomorrowland.

Style wise, he’s aims to go for the middle ground between function and fashion, “My personal preference has always been for the function-meets-beauty side of things,” he states. “I love a really cool bag that people use and wear in and it becomes something that you use frequently rather than one of a thousand in your wardrobe. Mine are less self conscious bags that you can wear – not a bag that wears you”.