ANDREW BUNNEY INTERVIEWS DEREK HARRIS ABOUT LEWIS LEATHERSThe latest feature from honeyee has the popular Japanese site focusing on the history of Lewis Leathers with an in-depth interview alongside brand owner Derek Harris. Amongst the many topics, honeyee breaks down Harris’ involvement in the brand and how he managed to make Lewis Leathers into one of the UK’s most enduring companies. Andrew Bunney conducts the interview, which can be seen below.*Above text courtesy of Hypebeast

People often ask us why we use the Aviakit logo as aninternal label in our jackets and what its significance is to Lewis Leathers asa company.The answer lies in our association with flying clothing andkit in the first quarter of the 20th Century, looking at theearliest advertisements we have in the LL archive, it can be noted as early as1930 that the name AVIAKIT is used as the Telegram address as can be seen at the foot of the advertisement on the left.At around the same time D Lewis Ltd produced woven labelswith the Aviakit brand name, the earliest type has the wording Shrunk BDA‘Rigmel’ below –which presumably means that they were first developed for theCivilian all-cotton Summer flying helmets featured in adverts of the time and werethen later used for the leather versions, D Lewis Ltd labels can also be seenin helmets from the same period.