“We are all carrying some baggage.”
All things in life are in an imperfect state of flux. We must thus appreciate beauty in all its impermanent and imperfect nature, embracing the scars that are ingrained in the hearts and skin of all humans.
That is the message of “Baggage”, a three-minute ad film produced by The Titus Upputuru Company for Hideous Luxury Leather Bags, founded by Daniel Upputuru.
The new film opens with a man ordering a seagull sandwich at a restaurant and sobbing uncontrollably after seeing it on the table. His backstory unfolds like a slow, unwinding horror film: he and his son stranded on an island and his child went missing, only to be served to his father by tribals in the guise of seagull meet that day. The father, returning to the mainland and ordering seagull sandwich, realized that the meat did not taste the same, and comprehended what he had unwittingly done.
In the end, we see the father emptying his guts in the washroom, standing by a pool and night contemplating suicide, and playing hide-and-cheek by walking his imaginary son home.
The film ends by whispering, “We are all carrying some baggage.’
A Green Tote Bag, exquisitely fashioned with hand in full grain leather, is the sole companion of the father throughout the ad film. His “Baggage” has chosen to stick with him forever.
“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 carries 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,” Titus Upputuru, director of the film, explained.
“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,” he continued.
Daniel Upputuru, founder of the brand Hideous, said: “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!” He added.
The campaign is running across digital platforms.
