Product Spotlight, The EcoMan, Travel:
Getting Hosed
Unlikely pairings sometimes make the sweetest match. Such is the case when Kresse Wesling, a Canadian-turned-British waste junkie met the London Fire Brigade. She immediately fell in love with their dirty, decommissioned fire hoses that had actively served thousands of people, and she recognized a big problem. “A fire hose has a double walled nitrile rubber jacket. Inside there is a nylon, fibrous core. Because of this core, you can’t shred it; you can’t melt it down; and you can’t make new hose,” Wesling fervently describes. “It just goes to landfill, and it just goes to waste.”
And so she began, along with her partner Elvis, transforming the fire hose into luxe craftsmanship. It started with fire hoses destined for the dump but hasn’t stopped there. Other rescued materials they re-fashion include waste coffee sacks, tea sacks, scrap sail cloth, parachute silk and used air traffic control flight strips.
Image from June edition of American Vogue
While Elvis & Kresse simply set out to solve a planetary problem, they inadvertently showed what true luxury is really all about—beauty stitched from, and with, compassion. Covetable pieces like the West End Belt (my favorite, and seen on the likes of Cameron Diaz), the Box Bag, the Billfold wallet, the Torpedo Cufflinks and the iPhone Case are made to last last lifetimes, for generations of waste-less living.
Experience the making of these gorgeous, made-from-waste accessories via this short film:
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