Lady LUX

This is definitely not your ordinary coffee-table book. Three years in the making, the glossy, 480-page tome was created in celebration of luxury leather brand Mulberry’s 40th anniversary. Journey through “Mulberry: The Book,” and you will be blown away by the endless array of creative glossy images.

“Rather than a dry, historical round-up of the brand’s past, it is a glimpse inside our world, a fly-on-the-wall, warts and all journey through the past two years of the brand’s life,” Mulberry’s website proclaimed.

The book starts out with a brief bio of the brand and its history, then delves into page after page of glossies snapped mostly by Mulberry staff member and photographer Venetia Dearden. Pared down from the original thousands of choices, the selected photos run the gamut: campaigns, shows, models and celebrities, behind-the-scenes at the brand’s factory, and past parties and products.

“Creating this book was a real labor of love,” Emma Hill, creative director, said to The Telegraph. “We wanted it to be really big and glossy, but we also found it really hard to edit the photos so we just kept lots in. Mulberry is such a visual brand and we wanted our book to reflect that.”

Highlights include decked-out models texting just before a show, glimpses into Mulberry’s famed parties, shots of pastoral English countryside and leatherworking tools from its Somerset factory. Hill’s personal fav is a shot of a group of models in their dressing gowns enjoying a quick smoke in the snow before a New York show.

The book had its official unveiling Thursday in the label’s New Bond Street store, amid the requisite plethora of books and—of all things—a decorate-your-own cake stall.

“We wanted to do something that reflected us as a brand and was very visual rather than wordy,” Hill told Elle UK. “It really tells a story about the heritage and family behind Mulberry.”

Mulberry bills itself as family, with models, photographers, fans of the brand and celebrities joining together with employees in an intimate fashion. “The family thing is really important to us,” Hill explained to The Telegraph. “Kids and dogs are often in the front row at our shows and even last season, when it was really oversubscribed, we wanted to keep that element.”

Hill reported the people over at Mulberry had a blast assembling the book.

“We found great things from the old days to put in the book like the old Mulberry bears from the 1970s,” she said to The Telegraph. “There is one man who has worked in the factory for 30 years and he used to be the Mulberry model with shoulder-length hair, so found photographs of him, which was very funny.”

Bringing together the “cool of the city and the craft of the countryside,” Mulberry soon emerged as the first British lifestyle brand. Founded in 1971, the label keeps to its roots by investing in a factory right in Somerset, aiming to increase the level of manufacturing found in the U.K. Today, many consumers are intimately acquainted with some of its top-selling bags: Bayswater, Roxanne, Mitzy, Alexa and Tillie.

Mulberry is backed by a strong commitment to corporate social responsibility. Dedicated to the ideal that it will make a positive difference to its people, environment and communities it works in, the company endeavors to make change in areas such as climate change, animal welfare, and health and well-being. The label regularly donates money, products and support to local charities.

For those dying to get their hands on the book, it makes a great coffee-table adornment and is available on Mulberry’s website for £55 (~USD$90).

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