For decades, the luxury industry has sold handbags on the strength of their leather. Brands wax poetic about full-grain calfskin, supple lambskin, and the family-owned tanneries that produce them. But would you spend $600 on a luxury bag made from a used truck tarp? Freitag, the design-forward Swiss bag brand, is betting on it. The company is launching a new premium line called Reference that features four bags, ranging from delicate baguettes to roomy totes, priced from $460 to $660. The collection taps into Freitag’s long history of making sustainable accessories from discarded materials and builds on it with more elegant, feminine designs. The question is whether the customer who carries a rugged Freitag messenger bag on her morning commute will spend a lot more money on a product to wear on date night or to a job interview. [Photo: Timothy Schaumburg/Freitag] Freitag was founded in 1993, when brothers Markus and Daniel Freitag—both graphic designers—needed a waterproof messenger bag that could survive their rainy bike commutes in downtown Zurich. One day, as they watched trucks drive by their apartment in inclement weather, they had the idea to repurpose old truck tarps as a material. For a strap, they used an old car seat belt, and they added bicycle inner tube to the edge. That original bag—the F13 Top Cat—quickly developed a cult following. [Photo: Freitag] Three decades later, Freitag makes roughly 400,000 products a year. To acquire enough tarps, they have a team of “truck spotters” who go around Europe in search of tarps close to the end of their life. This material is then washed with rainwater from the factory roof and cut so each bag features a unique combination of letters and colors. [Photo: Freitag] Freitag has experimented with a higher-end line before, dropping a limited-edition collection of dressier handbags 15 years ago. Customers have repeatedly asked for the company to bring it back. “In the past few years, we started to hear more a

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