You don’t expect black humour from a luxury accessories brand, but then this luxury accessories brand also calls itself Hideous. Hideous Luxury Leather Bags, founded by Daniel Upputuru, doesn’t hold up perfect as an ideal. The brand believes that the bags must be made from a hide that has had all the wear and tear of a life well lived ingrained on it, telling a story about scars that make each of us beautiful. Its new commercial is about a father wracked with guilt about his story and wearing his scars on his sleeve:
The film was directed by Titus Upputuru and produced by creative and production company, The Titus Upputuru Company, launched by the ex-Taproot Dentsu national creative director launched in 2022.
Daniel Upputuru stated, “As we went through the skins, the small marks on them fascinated us, made us ponder on how absolutely beautiful leather is. It reminded us of the Japanese process of pottery called Kintsugi, which gave a unique character, almost a personality to the pieces of art. We realised that there can be an element of hideous in beauty. It was a cathartic experience, we fell in love with the art.
“The full grain leather is always changing, it breathes, guarantees toughness and longevity. The process of creating each Hideous bag is itself very strenuous. After acquiring the full grain leather, the strength of various threads, the grammage of each thread, the number of stitches per inch is looked into. We also discovered the incredible strength of the Gattermann thread. Every Hideous bag is out of hand-picked full grain leather chosen from hundreds of hides, stitched with loving experienced hands, using strong German threads and following very high standards. When I heard the idea the line that we all have some baggage, I absolutely loved it.”
Titus Upputuru added, “Leather, like human skin, is made of wrinkles, scars, and all sorts of imperfect things. As we started thinking about the brand story, we stumbled upon the idea of baggage and how each of us carry some baggage. Now baggage is valuable because it’s part of the human experience. Sometimes it’s so hard to deal with. And the bag that we carry is a metaphor of all that we carry within ourselves. The film depicts a man who is carrying baggage that he finds hard to relinquish. It’s attached to him, like a glove. Scars are part of the brand architecture and we decided to tell a story that had a deep scar ingrained in it.”
The campaign is running across digital platforms.
Credits
Production Company: The Titus Upputuru Company
Director: Titus Upputuru
Producer: Raoul Amaar Abbas
Executive Producer: Samuel Choppara
Cinematographers: Raoul Amaar Abbas, Bhumanyu Nehra
Music: Hanif Shaikh
Editor: Ahsan Habib
