How to choose your first
(or next) Winklmayr
Colour is the most personal decision you'll make — and the one that pays dividends for years. A guide to the palette, written for the considered buyer.
Buying leather online asks for a small act of faith. You cannot feel the weight of the hide, or hold a tone up to the light and watch it shift. What you can do is understand the logic behind a palette — how colours are constructed, what they do over time, and which ones suit how you actually live.
Winklmayr's colour range is deliberately narrow. Every tone has been chosen to age well, sit well with a wardrobe, and mean something. This guide walks through all of them.
The versatile foundation colours
These are the tones that work quietly, every day, without effort. They ask very little of your wardrobe and give back generously.
Natural Tan
VersatileThe closest thing to a universal starting point. Warms gently over time into deep honey tones. Pairs with everything from raw denim to tailoring.
Cognac
VersatileA warm mid-brown with reddish depth. The most forgiving of the rich tones — elevated without being conspicuous. Timeless across every season.
Dark Brown
VersatileAlmost black in low light; revealing its warmth in sun. The most conventional choice, worn best by those who want their leather to recede.
Black
VersatilePure and architectural. Vegetable-tanned black develops a subtle sheen with wear — never flat, never garish. The city workhorse.
The statement colours
These tones are not difficult — they simply ask to be noticed. Worn with restraint in the rest of the outfit, they become the one thing people remember.
Bordeaux
StatementRich, vinous, and deeply grown-up. Sits beautifully against navy, grey, and ivory. Less expected than brown, but no more complicated to wear.
Forest
StatementA muted, earthy green that reads as almost neutral in the right context. Strongest against warm neutrals — camel, cream, rust.
Ink Blue
StatementSophisticated without straying far from the neutral family. The most wearable of the chromatically distinct options — an easy first departure from brown.
The elevated naturals
Undyed or lightly finished leathers for those who want to be involved in the process — who understand that what they carry at year five will look nothing like year one.
Natural / Undyed
ElevatedPale, almost parchment-like at the outset. Over months it takes on character from light, touch, and use — becoming utterly unique. Requires a little care.
Sand
ElevatedA warm, slightly more finished take on the natural palette. Develops a golden undertone with age. Pairs well with linen, white, and terracotta.
On patina — what time does to leather
All vegetable-tanned leather ages. The question is only how.
Winklmayr uses full-grain, vegetable-tanned hides throughout. This matters because synthetic and chrome-tanned leathers do not develop patina — they wear down. Vegetable tanning allows the fibres to absorb oils from your hands, condition from the creams you apply, and light from the world around them. The result, over years, is a depth and variation that cannot be replicated by any finishing process.
Lighter tones — Natural, Sand, Tan — show this transformation most dramatically. What begins pale becomes richly toned; what begins uniform becomes marked with the particular history of its use. Darker tones develop more subtly: a deepening of tone, a silkier surface, a sheen along the edges where the hide is handled most.
Neither path is better. One is visible; the other is felt.
How to choose — a simple frame
If your wardrobe is mostly neutrals — tan, cognac, or natural. Any will carry your look without competing with it.
If you dress in mostly black — black or dark brown. The contrast is handled by your clothing; the leather stays considered.
If you want one piece of colour — bordeaux or ink blue. Neither requires a bold wardrobe; both reward a restrained one.
If you're drawn to the idea of ownership as process — natural or sand. Buy it knowing it will look better in two years than it does today.
If you already own brown and want something different — forest is the quietest departure. Ink blue the slightly bolder one.
There is no wrong answer within this palette. Every tone has been edited with the same rigour as the objects themselves — each one chosen because it will still feel right in a decade. The decision is simply about which version of that rightness suits you.
If you're genuinely uncertain, start with tan or cognac. They are the most forgiving, the most universally loved, and — in our experience — the tones people return to even after exploring the rest.
"The best leather objects disappear into your life — present but unconsidered, until suddenly you cannot imagine the day without them."