Color Matching at the Handbag Clinic
Ben Staerck understands the value of color matching.1 As founder and managing director of the Handbag Clinic, he and his team devote themselves to the repair and restoration of high-end handbags; Chanel, Gucci, and Chloe are just some of the names that make regular appearances in the shop. Even before the Handbag Clinic opened, Staerck was bombarded with calls from women wondering when they could start bringing in their prized bags for rejuvenation. Today, the team works on about 100 bags each week, each one receiving personalized treatment.
Sarah Millington of The Northern Echo describes the scene:
A lone Celine bag stands in a booth ready to be sprayed. There are eight technicians, each employing a range of skills to make handbags as good as new, and often the first task is applying carefully matched paint. A plastic container stands in the corner, each brand with its own range of colors. When bags come in for repair, it’s useful to have this as a reference point, but, as Ben explains, it’s never that simple.
Leather, after all, is an organic material and each surface tells a unique tale; although two handbags may look similar from afar, even small differences in their response to dyes and the environments in which they have dwelled since manufacture can create significant color variations upon close examination. “Even if another bag comes in with the exact same color, we still need to tweak it, because obviously one bag might have been exposed to more sunlight and so on,” Staerck says. “Each repair is individual.”
To facilitate the color matching process, the team measures each bag’s color using a reflectance spectrophotometer, ensuring that light conditions, ambient colors, and natural variations in human color perception don’t interfere with accurate color assessment. These spectrophotometric measurements allow them to blend customized dyes that will create a seamless match based on objective data rather than the subjective human gaze. This color matching system gives Staerck the ability to repair everything from the hottest new handbags to beloved heirlooms whose leathers have both immense monetary and sentimental value while giving customers the confidence they need to trust the team with their prized possessions, some of which are worth tens of thousands of dollars. The extraordinary quality made possible by Staerck’s marriage of state-of-the-art technology with skilled handiwork assures even the most discriminating customers that their bags are in good hands.
