INDUSTRY BYPRODUCT Fish-skin fashions lure consumers

Salmon skins are the most popular choice.
SCRIPPS HOWARD
This fish tale needs no exaggeration. It's not about the one that got away. It is a story about something you will treasure.
Fish skins are being made into practical and beautiful apparel. Fish tanners in New Zealand, Ireland, and France maintain the skins are as strong as crocodile leather and have the strength and durability of a manmade fiber.
Haute couture designers are hailing fish skin's softness, beauty and versatility, producing everything from shoes to bikinis.
Dior sold pink salmon shoes and an $800 purse designed by John Galliano in its boutiques during the spring season. Bottega Veneta showed a stingray clutch for $1,180. And Givenchy had a small evening stingray purse on a silk cord for $1,620. Salmon bikinis are even being marketed by the Scottish fashion firm, Skini.
Jean-Charles Grenon-Andrieu owns two Ocean Leather shops, one in Naples, Fla., the other in the Virgin Islands. A Web site, www.oceanleather.com, also offers his products.
Grenon-Andrieu and his wife, Edith, keep a variety of at least 10 different fish leathers in stock.
"We are going to be selling shoes in stingray and clothing in salmon this winter," Jean-Charles Grenon-Andrieu said. "My customers want the black stingray shoes to match the bags they already own. It will be a limited supply at first, but we are going to experiment."
Experimentation
Experimenting won't be limited to styles, but to breeds of fish as well.
"I will also start to work with farm-raised sturgeon and carp," Grenon-Andrieu said.
He says the best-selling items have been those made of salmon skin, for the customers familiar with salmon and who feel comfortable with it."Customers in the islands chose stingray and eagle ray, because they scuba dive and snorkel and see the fish when they are in the water, but in Naples they like the salmon," Grenon-Andrieu said. "I did have one customer here who bought a stingray purse for his wife, because he was stung by one and wanted to get back at the breed."
Stingray skin is smooth in life, but beads up and is called caviar leather when it is dried. A backbone cartilage also appears that creates a design down the middle. The stingray cartilage is short, about an inch long, and the eagle ray cartilage goes down the whole length of the skin. To create a purse in stingray you have to use as many skins as there are sides to get matching cartilages.
Preparation process
Grenon-Andrieu explained that the tanning process takes from four to seven weeks. To prepare the skins for tanning all flesh remnants are removed, and the skins are put into drums with a special fluid that puffs them slightly. This process helps the scales fall away without damaging the skins.
The hardest part of the process, Grenon-Andrieu said, is to get the leftover flesh off the hides. The tanners have to be careful not to rip the hides during this process. Chemicals turn the skins into leather and the fish odor is gone. The skins are dyed, softened and dried and then softened with oils again. The skins become durable, soft and water resistant when they are ready for commercial use.
Even if the fish was colorful in life after it dies the natural skin becomes beige or gray and must be dyed to give it color again. Soaking the skins with vegetable dyes enhances them and forms a glaze or shiny finish in a bright hue while the chrome process of dying the skins gives the hides the feel of suede and subdues the color.
Byproduct is fashion
The skins used to make beautiful fashions are byproducts of the fishing industries of Ireland, New Zealand, France, Canada and the United States and are not from endangered species.
"Only a handful of companies concentrate on fish leather production," Grenon-Andrieu said, "and this small industry is doing something most of America has recently learned to do -- recycle."
The fish skins that Grenon-Andrieu uses are either farm-raised or come from fish used for food. They include sharkskin, African Nile perch, masked water and sea snake, stingray, eagle ray, Atlantic salmon, cod and chum salmon. Wolf fish is also sold at the store, but there is a moratorium on this fish from the government of Iceland, and it is available in limited quantities right now.
Fish leather does not have the deep reptile scales that flip back and eventually fall off after years of use and misuse. When you buy a fish leather purse or wallet you will have the shadings of scales, but most of the time it will feel smooth and soft.
Prices for fish leather products run the gamut, from $29 for a salmon leather card case to $750 or more for a stingray briefcase.