An unspeakable evil, an everlasting baggage, and an inconsolable father; Hideous Luxury Leather Bags' first ad

“No parent should have to bury their child,” said Theoden king to Gandalf the White in The Lord of the Rings epic. 

What happens when a parent cannot bury their child because something even more evil has happened to both of them? Delirium becomes an everyday mood, and the baggage of the abomination turns into a shadow, never letting go. 

This is the gist of Baggage, a three-minute ad film, produced by The Titus Upputuru Company, for Hideous Luxury Leather Bags, founded by Daniel Upputuru. 

An inconsolable father breaks down after he orders a seagull sandwich at a hotel because he’s driven mad by guilt; he and his son were stranded on an island and his kid went missing. Tribals of the island met the father and fed him seagull meat that day.

When he returned to the mainland and ate a seagull sandwich, he was shocked to realise the meat did not taste the same, and broke down.

The truth, unsaid, lingers through the ad. 

We see the father empty his guts in the washroom, stare silently at the swimming pool contemplating whether he should do the deed, and is then seen playing hide and seek with his son and then walking him home. The son is not there, he’s dead. 

A Green Tote Bag, delicately fashioned with hand in full grain leather, is the only companion of the father throughout the ad film. Baggage, it seems, has chosen to stick with him forever. 

Titus Upputuru, director of the film added, “Leather, like human skin, is made of wrinkles, scars, and all sorts of imperfect things. As we started thinking about the brand story, we stumbled upon the idea of baggage and how each of us carries some baggage. Now baggage is valuable because it’s part of the human experience. Sometimes it’s so hard to deal with. And the bag that we carry is a metaphor of all that we carry within ourselves.” 

“The film depicts a man who is carrying baggage that he finds hard to relinquish. It’s attached to him, like a glove. Scars are part of the brand architecture and we decided to tell a story that had a deep scar ingrained in it,” he continues. 

The campaign is running across digital platforms.

“As we went through the skins, the small marks on them fascinated us, made us ponder on how absolutely beautiful leather is. It reminded us of the Japanese process of pottery called Kintsugi, which gave a unique character, almost a personality to the pieces of art. We realised that there can be an element of hideous in beauty. It was a cathartic experience, we fell in love with the art,” says the founder of the brand Hideous, Daniel Upputuru. 

“The full grain leather is always changing, it breathes, and guarantees toughness and longevity. The process of creating each Hideous bag is itself very strenuous. After acquiring the full grain leather, the strength of various threads, the grammage of each thread, the number of stitches per inch is looked into.” 

“We also discovered the incredible strength of the Gattermann thread. Every Hideous bag is out of hand-picked full grain leather chosen from hundreds of hides, stitched with loving experienced hands, using strong German threads and following very high standards. When I heard the idea the line that we all have some baggage, I absolutely loved it!” He added.

Credits

Produced by The Titus Upputuru Company

Director Titus Upputuru

Producer Raoul Amaar Abbas

Executive Producer Samuel Choppara

Cinematography Raoul Amaar Abbas, Bhumanyu Nehra

Music Hanif Shaikh

Editor Ahsan Habib