The Method
We start with the hide, not the paint.
A season at HOF does not begin with a colour, or a name, or a mood board. It begins with a material. A hide worked the way no one else works it. A weave held by hands still learning it from a grandmother. A finish that no one has thought to bring into a car before.
The maison spends the first weeks of every collection looking. We travel to the makers who hold something specific — a technique, a raw material, a provenance — and we ask whether it is worth composing a season around. Most of the time the answer is no. When the answer is yes, everything that follows — paint, thread, hardware, the car itself — is built to serve that one material.
The material that opens this chapter is camel leather — a hide so rare that only one tannery in the world works it at LWG Gold standard.
The Material
Camel leather. A hide with a memory.
The camel is the animal of the desert - of resilience, of identity, of a life shaped by heat and distance. Its hide is a by-product of the culture that has kept it for centuries. Nothing is farmed for the leather; nothing is wasted for it.
Camel leather is rare. Rare because the material itself is uncommon, and rare because no two hides are the same. Each carries the character of the animal that wore it - the years, the terrain, the marks of a life. For an atelier that composes each interior by hand, the material fits: no two seats read identically, no two doors sit the same way. The composition is fixed at signing; the surface stays individual to the collector who receives it.
The hide is prepared by Al Khaznah Leathers, the UAE's national sustainable tannery, based in Abu Dhabi. It is solar-powered, treats its own water, works chrome-free - and it is the only LWG Gold tannery in the region, one of very few in the world working camel at this standard. Every skin is tested, dyed by hand, and matched to the paint on the exterior.
This is the first season HOF has worked with camel. It is unlikely to be the last.
Image courtesy of Al Khaznah Leathers
The Palette
Four skins. One conversation.
The palette we work with is not a swatch chart. It is four full skins, laid out the way a couturier lays out a season’s bolts:
- Camel— the natural tone of the hide, the colour of the animal itself
- Burgundy— a deep, hand-dyed red the maison finishes for private commissions
- Coyote— a warm mid-brown, the tone of the leather that ages best across a lifetime
- Hair on— the traditional finish that keeps the animal’s own fur across the surface, offered as a single detail piece
No white, no black. Not because we cannot dye the hide those colours — because camel is not what those colours are for. This is a leather that lives in warmth.
The composition · Material before colour
The Unveiling
First shown at Goodwood, with the Abu Dhabi Investment Office.
The material was first shown publicly at the Orangery, inside the grounds of Goodwood Festival of Speed 2026, as guest of the Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO). ADIO opened the room; AKL brought the skins; HOF composed them onto the car.
CEO Shamsa Alahbabi of AKL joined HOF and ADIO's Karim Ghamraoui at the Orangery to walk guests through the material, one skin at a time. The composition begins as a partnership: a maison, a tannery, and a region that carries both.
In collaboration with
ADIO
Abu Dhabi Investment Office
A strategic enabler of Abu Dhabi’s creative and industrial ecosystem — facilitating engagement between international makers and Abu Dhabi’s companies across automotive, advanced manufacturing and the creative industries.
AKL
Al Khaznah Leathers · UAE
The UAE’s national sustainable tannery, based in Abu Dhabi. The only LWG Gold tannery in the region and the only tannery in the world working camel leather at this standard — solar-powered, chrome-free, hides sourced as by-product.
Interested in the Abu Dhabi Edition