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SECRID and the Things We Carry
LE MILE
Before leaving the house, there is still that familiar inventory of what needs to come along. Phone, keys, wallet. The sequence has survived remarkably well, even as the objects behind it have changed. Payment cards, train tickets and boarding passes have moved onto screens, receipts increasingly arrive by email, and cash has become optional in many situations. The wallet remains, though its definition has loosened considerably.
SECRID has been following these changes for much of its history. Founders René van Geer and Marianne van Sasse van Ysselt began considering the consequences of electronic payment in the 1990s, long before the smartphone gathered so many everyday functions into one device. The Cardprotector that followed in 2009 remains at the centre of the Dutch company today. Its aluminium case holds a small stack of cards, while a lever at the base pushes them upwards in a staggered arrangement for access. Seventeen years of development have left that basic gesture recognisable, while the object around it has become increasingly varied.
SECRID
Premium Cardprotector+ Fluted for MagSafe - red
SECRID
Premium Envelope Wallet+ Naplak - black
Premium Cardprotector+ Fluted for MagSafe - red
With the Premium Cardprotector+ Fluted for MagSafe, the idea moves directly onto the smartphone. A magnetic connection holds the Cardprotector to the back of a compatible phone and allows it to be detached when needed. The Plus mechanism accommodates metal cards alongside conventional ones, while vertical grooves across the aluminium front give the Fluted edition additional grip. Electronic payment helped prompt SECRID's early reconsideration of the conventional wallet; three decades later, the resulting idea has arrived on the back of a device that has itself assumed many of the wallet's former functions.
Its position there also changes the way the Cardprotector is seen. An object previously retrieved from a pocket or bag now becomes part of something already in the hand, exposing its surface and colour throughout the day. Offered in several colourways, the Premium Cardprotector+ Fluted for MagSafe can remain discreet or become a visible accent, with the Red version bringing particular presence to the ridged aluminium and polished metal lever. Choosing one begins to resemble the decisions made around other personal accessories, where function establishes the object and colour determines how comfortably, or deliberately, it enters a look.
This territory is less new to SECRID than the industrial appearance of its original Cardprotector might suggest. Van Geer comes from industrial and product design, while Van Sasse van Ysselt's background is in fashion, and leather entered the development of the Cardprotector relatively early. Once the aluminium mechanism was combined with leather, the compact card system also entered the familiar territory of the traditional wallet. Over time, that relationship between mechanism and material has become broad enough to accommodate different proportions, leather treatments, colours and ways of carrying the same underlying system.
SECRID
Premium Cardprotector+ Fluted for MagSafe - red
Premium Envelope Wallet+ Naplak - black
SECRID
Premium Envelope Wallet+ Naplak - black
The Premium Envelope Wallet+ Naplak makes this particularly clear. Its Cardprotector+ sits within a folded leather construction with additional room for coins and small personal belongings, giving the wallet a different presence in the hand and a more natural relationship with the wider language of leather accessories. Naplak contributes something specific here. The semi-gloss Naplak leather in Black and Plum, paired with gold coloured components, introduces a material sensibility associated with fashion and leather goods without obscuring the functional structure underneath.
A wallet occupies an unusual position in a wardrobe because it is rarely worn in the conventional sense, yet it accompanies clothing with an intimacy shared by relatively few objects. It moves between hand, pocket, bag and table, collecting traces of use while repeatedly entering view. SECRID's expanding attention to finishes, leather treatments and colour acknowledges this role. The choice between aluminium and leather, a restrained colour and a vivid one, or the compact Cardprotector and the fuller Envelope affects little about the basic purpose of carrying cards. It changes considerably how the object participates in someone's daily appearance.
This is also where the two products become more interesting together. The Premium Cardprotector+ Fluted for MagSafe gives SECRID's compact aluminium architecture a newly exposed position beside the phone. The Envelope Wallet+ Naplak allows the same core mechanism to inhabit a more expressive leather form with room for the miscellaneous things that still accumulate through a day. A metal key, loose change or a ring temporarily removed from a finger hardly belongs to a grand argument about analogue life. They simply exist, and good objects tend to become convincing when they account for such ordinary realities.
The persistence of the Cardprotector at the centre of both products says something about SECRID's approach to development as well. Its original mechanism has remained recognisable while locking systems, surfaces, materials and applications have continued to evolve. Current Premium+ versions can hold metal cards, MagSafe has created another way of carrying the Cardprotector, and leather allows the same architecture to move into forms increasingly legible as fashion accessories. Production and assembly in the Netherlands, including through social enterprises, sit alongside an established repair infrastructure, giving this gradual development a practical dimension. An object used every day has time to reveal where it can be improved.
SECRID
Premium Envelope Wallet+ Naplak - black
SECRID
Premium Cardprotector+ Fluted for MagSafe - red
Seen from here, the contemporary wallet becomes a surprisingly broad design proposition. It can sit almost flush against a smartphone or take the form of a semi-gloss Naplak accessory in Black or Plum; it can be selected for the efficiency of its mechanism and still carry the aesthetic weight of something chosen to accompany a wardrobe. SECRID's strength lies in allowing those possibilities to develop around a recognisable core. What began with a question about carrying cards has grown into a wider consideration of how the small objects closest to us should function, feel and look.
images (c) SECRID
DISCOVER MORE: www.secrid.com
Explore SECRID’s contemporary wallets, from compact cardholders and MagSafe designs to leather styles made for everyday carry.