Empress Travel Club × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A July study.
Empress Travel Club is a membership travel agency built as a global private concierge, its team spread across all time zones so a member’s plans keep moving while the member sleeps. The promise, in their own words, is that the club “gives members back time.” Stephanie Malakie founded it in 2020 after more than two decades in luxury hospitality and travel; her site places her in Hawaii these days, raising two boys and running marathons, and the same page reports a coffee farm in Kona and Forbes Travel Guide’s 2026 Travel Professional of the Year honor.
The mark is what asked for the study. A geometric gold monogram of mirrored, interlaced curves sits above wide serif capitals reading EMPRESS, with TRAVEL CLUB letterspaced small beneath; sampled from their pages, the gold drifts between a bronzy #B09040 and a brighter #D0A040. On their near-black ground the mark glows, while on plain white it thins out, which told us where the foil belonged before anything was cut. A house that drew its own monogram, and drew it this well, has earned a careful pressing.
The mark, as found
Pressed
Dark espresso and warm caramel take the blind pressings, espresso answering the deep luxury field of their site and caramel picking up the warmth already living in that gold. Black carries the gold foil, and there the monogram sits closest to how the club wears it online. We went back and forth about foiling the caramel as well; in the end the blind deboss won, because the interlace reads cleanest as pure shadow.
The Returned Hour
For the companion we drew a vintage pocket watch in one bold uniform line, the winding crown and its bow loop sitting at the top of the case. Twelve plain ticks ring the dial, and the long hand reaches toward ten while the short leans to two. Just inside the ticks a single arrow sweeps counterclockwise, starting near four o’clock and passing under twelve to land its head at eight – the watch visibly running backward. Beneath the case sits one line of plain capitals, GIVES MEMBERS BACK TIME, their own claim set where a luggage tag will carry it around the world.
We made this out of love. Leatherius Woodman is on a mission to create and share artifacts of beauty, craft and love – this study is one of them, and we hope the feeling is mutual. Every image is a render – how we prototype before cutting a die.
If you're Empress Travel Club and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.