Skinning/Leatherworking

So I started playing again yesterday after two years break. Rolled the new Demon Hunter and got skinning and leatherworking from him. Now, I remember back in Cata I think, I didn't need to level professions from the scratch, it didn't matter since I could start doing some higher level crafting right away or am I making stuff up?

Auction house doesn't have anything low level except for couple stacks of medium leather costing 800G each, so do I really start from scratch and need to gather crapton of light/med/heavy leather etc to level my LW?

I already started leveling my skinning and got it to 125 quick but I'm still about 200 Light leathers away from getting to med leather.