Meet Barbi

Yes, I hug my straps. No, it's not weird. They need love too.

I’ve been making guitar straps since 2008.

It started in Argentina with a friend and one very ordinary guitar strap. Back then, generic straps were pretty much the choice, and he asked if I could give his a bit more personality.

I did. He loved it—and his reaction made me want to go one step further: buy a piece of leather and try making the whole strap from scratch.

There was just one small detail: I knew nothing about leather, and this was before every skill came with fifty online tutorials :)

An old-school leathersmith showed me a few basic things: wet vegetable-tanned leather and you can mould it, mark it, change it. That was about all the encouragement I needed.

A friend and I bought a big piece of leather, shut ourselves away in my little studio apartment and started experimenting with anything we could get our hands on. And when I say anything, I mean anything.

A month later, we had three very wonky straps, ink-stained hands and absolutely no idea whether anyone would want them.

We walked into a guitar shop and asked if we could show them what we’d made. The guy looked pretty dismissive — two young women in a very male world, carrying something that wasn’t really a thing in Argentina yet.

Then we put the straps on the counter.

His face changed. His eyes widened, he called his colleagues over — and we made our first sale.

We walked out trying to look completely normal. The second we turned the corner, we started jumping up and down like lunatics.

Someone had actually paid for something I made!

I still remember that feeling...

Nearly two decades later, the workshop is now in the UK, the hands are a little older, and more than 500 reviews have come in from players all over the world.

But I still work in much the same way.

I’ve never been particularly interested in following one prescribed technique. I’m interested in the idea, and in figuring out how to make it exist.

Over the years I’ve used photography, transfers, found imagery, drawing, laser engraving, painting, sculpting, traditional leatherworking tools, digital tools and, more recently, AI as part of the design process.

Some are centuries old. Some barely existed a few years ago.

I love both.

That space between old and new is where my work has always lived.

For me, the tool has never been the point. The vision is.

My job is to choose, combine, adapt, experiment and then translate the idea into leather. That process has changed constantly since those first experiments in Argentina, always with the same intention: to push the final piece a little further.

Today I make Signature straps, one-offs, Limited Editions and a small number of commissions.

They may all look different, but the foundations stay the same: premium leather, comfort, strong construction and pieces with enough personality that you’ll hopefully still want them on your shoulder years from now.

I helped a friend make one ordinary strap feel like his.

Somewhere along the way, I found something that felt like mine.

And I’m still experimenting.