look for leather coats. I’m on Etsy a lot, which is full of other hand-made vendors, so it is really cool to be able to support the small shop in the southern United States, or there is one company that I buy reclaimed leather from. I can tell you where each single piece came from in my stash because I pay so much attention to where everything is coming from!
Things like zippers can be tricky, they wear out after a while and they aren’t always the easiest to take out of coats either. For clasps, we have a lady who has been donating a lot of purses to us, so that I can apart all the hardware out of them and start re-using them. Obviously I’m not the only person who does it, there are a lot of people who up-cycle, but for us it just made sense. I love sewing with old stuff, and honestly old leather coats are just the best! It’s so fun to sew with them because they all have a story, a background, and a smell — then as you take them apart you understand how the original tailor put them together. There is definitely a difference in quality between the stuff from the 70’s or 80’s and the pieces that are being made now.
Casa London: How was the reception when you first started selling the repurposed bags?
Brittany: I just remember in the very beginning when we kind of started this, I made a purse, and I was so proud of the purse! It had this beautiful orange canvas fabric on it, and I was so excited because one lady came to the market that first week and spent $60 on it! I think I was excited about that for a solid week and a half afterwards because it was so unexpected. When the first one was gone, that spurred me into action.
Casa London: So have you got any plans for expansion?
Brittany: This summer we are hoping to expand a little bit more, do some more gardening out the back! We are just going to keep doing what we are doing, we will continue to stock in Loveleigh Boutique. It would be great to be like Rustix and have to physically move out – that was great for them!
(You can read our interview with Rustix on page 8 of our previous issue).