Mary Wing To: innovative contemporary fashion using traditional saddlery skills

If you ever needed an example of someone following the typical career advice to ‘do what you love’ then look no further than Mary Wing To. In fact, the London-based artisan has managed to blend several things she loves – fashion, leather and horses – into one inimitable career. A master leatherworker who has trained in both fashion design and saddlery, Wing To combines these passions to create innovative leather garments and accessories using traditional saddlery craftsmanship – an unusual approach that results in truly unique work.

As a child growing up in Manchester, Wing To loved horses. Later, during a master’s degree in fashion design and technology at the London College of Fashion, she found she enjoyed working with leather and was able to draw inspiration from the equestrian world she loved. “I always wanted to work in the creative field but my instinct drew me to leather,” she says.

However, on graduating, she felt she was lacking the necessary leatherworking skills to pursue a career making leather garments. Someone else in her position might have looked to train with a leatherworker in the fashion industry, but Wing To made the unusual decision to train with a master saddler instead.

That was a decisive step in shaping the career she has now. Following a two-year saddlery course at Capel Manor College in North London she went on to gain an apprenticeship in harness making at the Royal Mews, Buckingham Palace, working alongside Francis Roche, Her Late Majesty The Queen’s master saddler. There followed a QEST scholarship to train with master whip maker Dennis Walmsley. All with the aim of applying the artisanal techniques she was learning to her own fashion designs. “I wanted to show how traditional leather skills could be used to make modern fashion,” she says.

The results are extraordinary: leather waistcoats and jackets featuring braided human and horse hair; studded leather bracelets and bridle headpieces; and Hylonome, a leather ensemble designed to resemble a female centaur, with which she won The World of Wearable Art (WOW) Supreme Award in 2011, making her the first British person to do so.

These days, her skills are in demand far and wide. She runs the UK leather workshop at luxury fashion house Chanel, as well as taking on commissions through her own studio, designing and making every piece herself. Recent work includes a hand stitched leather belt worn by Carey Mulligan in the 2015 film Far From the Madding Crowd, and a gold metallic crocodile leather coat for Nicholas Oakwell Couture. In 2012 she was invited to create a moulded leather horsehead sculpture with fitted leather double bridle to celebrate the diamond jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.

As if that wasn’t enough, she also started whip brand Whip in Hand, handcrafting bespoke luxury whips for equestrian clients including British Olympians Charlotte Dujardin and Nick Skelton. Hidden inside each whip handle is a rolled-up snippet of The Times newspaper showing the current date “so in the distant future if someone wanted to know the age of the whip they could find out,” she says. “It’s part of the tradition.” 

It’s a lovely touch that sums up Wing To’s vision: to look to the future while respecting the past. By blending her passions, and pursuing the twin goals of innovation and tradition, she is both reviving traditional saddlery skills and helping to give an age-old craft a solid future in a whole new arena.

Discover Mary Wing To’s profile and more talents on Homo Faber Guide