Quite honestly, it’s a mystery how Jony Ive manages to go to work in the morning. Well, not a physical mystery. The man who spends night and day obsessing over the tiniest tweaks into getting the iPhone design just right is chauffeured to work. In a Bentley.
Ive’s creations often don’t get the same level of luxury. Most iPhone cases are obtuse silicon diapers that add back the precious grams and millimeters he poured his soul into shaving. But Ive can find a kindred spirit in a team of Danish entrepreneurs who are giving Bentley-level respect to the work of the Bentley-chauffeured genius.
They call themselves Mujjo.
Founded in 2011, besides making one of the better leather wallet cases out there for the iPhone, Mujjo creates leather carrying sleeves for both the MacBook Air and the iPad, and also offers leather, crochet or cloth touchscreen gloves with display functionality in each finger (even works with your palm!).
However, let’s not get distracted here: Mujjo’s leather wallet case for the iPhone is fantastic. It’s sleek, adds very little bulk to the iPhone’s overall presence and best of all is surprisingly affordable.
Available in tan, grey or black, all three colors avoid the obnoxious look some leather colors are susceptible to and the leather itself, vegetable-tanned and treated with aniline oil which Mujio claims to enrich ‘color tones,’ feels like quality in your palm. The Mujjo leather wallet case is as delicate as any other leather case and can accrue some personality marks, but not in a way that remarks poorly on the leather’s quality. The leather doesn’t fade nor blemish.
The leather itself is held together by a polycarbonate frame that acts as a shock absorber when your iPhone makes the accidental journey from your hand to the ground, and the inside of the frame is lined with suede to keep your iPhone extra snuggly. To protect the leather from fraying at stress points, Mujjo has implemented “Moulded (sic) Edge Technology” to ensure your case lasts at least as long as your iPhone.
My Mujjo case has ripped (slightly) on one corner. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure it happened when my phone dropped about 15 feet from a rooftop hatch, and when I climbed down the ladder to inspect it, the screen wasn’t cracked. The tear is more a gentle reminder than a design flaw.
Mujjo offers three sorts of leather wallet cases for the iPhone. The first has the wallet pocket facing vertically up, while the second version has the pocket at an 80-degree slant. This means that your credit cards will sit in the pocket horizontally with the second version, and vice versa with the first. Mujjo’s third case for the iPhone is a leather wallet sleeve that has the wallet pocket facing vertically up like the first version and has an opening at the top just big enough to slip an iPhone through.
So far in the past two months the wallet pocket’s elasticity has held up. There is no slippage holding a single credit card and a public transit pass, and in terms of any unwanted stretching, the pocket performs as expected under reasonable pressure.
The one complaint I have about the Mujjo leather wallet case is the branding they’ve embossed on the rear.
It felt tacky when I first saw it in person, but it’s grown on me, or at the very least I’ve grown to ignore it. While I understand a designer’s temptation to imprint their name on their darling creation, it does feels out of place with the reserved sense of class the case has otherwise.
Shipping roughly costs $8-$15, depending on the shipping method. The vertical wallet pocket model comes roughly out to $43 (Tan, Gray, Black) and is only available for the iPhone 6s. The 80-degree wallet pocket model comes out to roughly $54 for the iPhone 6s Plus version (Tan, Gray, Black) and $48 for the iPhone 6s version (Tan, Gray, Black). The wallet sleeve model comes out to roughly $38 (Tan, Black), is not offered in gray and is only available for the iPhone 6s.
The leather wallet case is a solid purchase considering that it’s only roughly $50 with shipping included. I feel almost obliged to recommend the Mujjo case to anybody looking for a new personality trait. And this is considering that I had to wait an aggravating 62 case-less days to receive mine from the day I ordered it due to production issues. You’ve paid hundreds for your phone. You may as well dress it accordingly.
Jony Ive deserves a Bentley. So does your phone.
