Vintage Leather Purse Care

I have had the good fortune to add several beautiful leather purse from the 1920's and 1930's to my collection in the past year or so, and in the process have become aware of the need to properly condition these pieces before using them. With the large increase in vintage leather pieces in my life due to my boyfriend's ever-growing WWI collection, we have been experimenting with a lot of different products to find things that will rehydrate and condition the leather without darkening or changing it too much. As with any organic material, leather dries out over time, and this can make it brittle and weak. We have found that a little bit of saddle soap can do wonders to soften and clean up a vintage piece before you start using it, even if the leather appears pristine to begin with. Most vintage leather pieces you find will not have been conditioned in decades, and if you want to be able to get a lot of use out of it you do not want to forget to take the time to do this first. Here are a few pictures of the purses I just recently used saddle soap on; they look good but the leather was cracking on the navy one, and the light brown one was so dry it that bits were starting to crumble off of it when touched. The Art Deco one with the flowers was in good shape but seemed a bit dry, and I wanted to make sure to do this before I start using it. After the saddle soap dried I used some light brown shoe polish on the light brown purse; I need to get some darker red-brown for the contrasting parts - I will add pictures once I do. While I have learned a lot about this from experience I am by no means an expert, so if you have any other tips or product reccomendations please share them in the comments section.

These pictures are before:

These pictures are during & after:

And this is just to show off the NRA tag inside my favorite purse!