About Us
About Us
Mimo (Meaningful Ideas for Meaningful Objects) is a handmade, one-of-a-kind fish skin & leather jewelry line designed and produced in Toronto by Fabiana Papaleo. Our main objective is to re-purpose discarded leather into a meaningful and sustainable jewellery line that has an unique flare. We design exclusive products with the right amount of creativity, trend awareness and boldness. We hope you like it. :)
Over the past 10 years, Fabiana has been working in the Canadian fashion industry as a Buyer, Footwear Product Developer and Fashion Trend Forecaster. She has fallen in love with fish leather while developing a Footwear collection for The Bay. The texture, colouring and resilience of this source material greatly inspired the artist. Four years ago, as a result of the designer’s passion for jewelry and leather, Mimo was born.
Unique style
The pieces are developed respecting the nature of each material, therefore, each one is exclusive as we may not be able to find two similar raw elements. We create collections considering the uniqueness of each woman.
Our Leathers
Mimo uses mostly fish skins from Tilapia, Salmon and Carp, but we also work with a selection of scrap leathers.
We use fish leather as our primary source as it has an exquisite look with scale pockets that brings sophistication to the jewellery. The fish skins have the aesthetic versatility needed to bring nature to life in strong statement pieces. While thin and delicate, the fish leather offers great resistance to wear.
Tannery Process
Specially raised in farms for consumption, all the fish used is cleaned, scaled and tanned in an eco-friendly way. The skins are turned into leather and tanned with a technique that uses a 100% vegetarian powder extracted from an assortment of trees. This process ensures the removal of all odours and gives the leather a suede finish, without employing chrome or any other metals.
Our stones
We work with stones in different sizes, forms and patterns. The stones are hand picked to achieve a distinctive look.
The agate slices are an organic work of art, it comes in different shades and it is often color-dyed for ornamental purposes. The stones of brownish tones interlayered with white and grays are usually naturally dyed.