Our story

The why: 8 years of travel

Metropolitans story started eight years ago.
We are Nour & Hassen, a couple of young executives that live in a high paced corporate environment and enjoy traveling across the world.

We traveled together in 20 countries and discovered breathtaking landscapes and beautiful views. During all of our trips, we were obsessed with 4 main patterns:
1. Authenticity: we wanted to live authentic experiences with local residents of each country, village, the island we went to. We always privileged local houses/resorts over hotel chains and wanted to live with the local community
2. Uniqueness: we wanted to have a unique souvenir of each place we went to. We did not hesitate to purchase local artworks, souvenir in order to keep the memory of the instant we lived
3. Quality over quantity: we want our experience to be qualitative and not quantitative. As such, we always preferred taking a small amount of clothing/goods with us or having a short stay rather than staying for a longer time and have tour guide after tour guide with no meaning of what we did.
4. Sustainability: Our products are designed in authentic leather that has been selected as a by-product of meat.
We are also strong advocates of the ecological transition and will offset our international shippings. 
We are also empowering women designers and manufacturers around the world by getting them into our platform.

During these travels, we figured our that authentic, qualitative and unique leather goods we use were our best allies during these journeys

These 4 values are at the core of what we want to share with our community at Metropolitans Paris. As such, we created Metropolitans, a brand of authentic unique and qualitative hand made leather goods for everyday and travel use.

The How: launching a brand

We spent the last six month navigating the leather providers market. Indeed, our obsession was to find leather manufacturers that provide the best quality of leather with an affordable price.

We are advocates of authenticity and craftsmanship
Born and raised in Tunisia, we have been living day to day in the city of Tunis where luxury leather goods have been produced by artists in the old-village Al-Medina.

Evolving in Paris for the last 10 years, we have chosen Paris as our country of design and craftsnmenship as it is the city of design and Art. Some of our products are inspired by the cultural heritage in Paris and France.

We believe in sustainable products

Metropolitans is a sustainable brand by design, and this is via 3 main factors:

1. We strongly believe that less is more in terms of products and experience. Our travels showed us that we can live with less clothing, accessories with better quality, and longevity. 

2. Our leather is a by-product of meat by design, meaning that we will have a minimum carbon impact. We will also set-up a carbon-offsetting initiative for each shipping

3. We support underprivileged women around the world. All of our partners and designers are women who are small business owners including designers, manufacturers, and leather craftsmen. We do believe that we can leverage our brand to empower women designers

The products: hand-made leather accessories

Our first collection is inspired by all the experiences we lived. We listened to our client's needs and will launch to start with 3 main products:

1. Cardholders: our cardholders are hand-made in original full-grain leather and can hold up to five cards (including IDs and receipts)

2. Passport holders: this was our first idea as it is liked to travel. The passport holder can not only contain your passport but also your boarding pass as well as 5 of the cards of your choice.

3. Clutches: the ultimate girl "compagnon". Clutches are the best alternative between a bag and a wallet. Our hand-made whole-grain leather clutch will follow you to the moon!

These products will be shipped around the world.