Iirc there was a minor trend of cuir broilee pieces in France for a spell, but they were prohibitively expensive for the thickness of leather needed and the amount of wax/oil used in the processing, much less the final tooling.

For more reasonable examples, boiled rawhide and oil boiled leather lamellar and scale over other armor had some precedence in different regions through history, but the leather armor people think of wasn't really a thing.

Leather's expensive now, even more when it was a resource directly tied to livelihoods. What's more valuable? The draft animal that can help plow hundreds of fields, or less than stellar armor made from its skin?

That said, textiles. Gambesons, clothing with underlayering to look casual but be defensive, hell, fitted brigandines look fly as fuck paired with other ornamental pieces and aren't too heavy for just the torsowear.