Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2017 | Page 38

Inside Business
Capturing the
beach in a bag
Some people get into business purely to
make money – but that could hardly be
said of Georgia Wyatt-Willsmore.
What drives her is a hatred of waste,
which is why she uses her arts training to
create stylish products out of what other
people might see just as junk from the
beach.
Having spent seven years plugging
away at her quirky seaside-infused bags,
suddenly her signature Wyatt and Jack
tote design is taking off, with big-name
retailers queuing up to stock it. Jackie
McCarrick spoke to her.
Georgia laughs as she describes herself as
a ‘deck chair nerd’, and promptly reels off
the colours of stripey canvas that various
locations use for their deckchairs.
London’s Royal parks go for green and
white because apparently the Queen
favours the colour, Brighton beaches have
blue and white, whilst Margate is right out
there with a funky ‘Rasta’ stripe of red, black
green and yellow.
Her intimate knowledge of the classic
British outdoor chair springs from the fact
that she reclaims redundant deckchairs and
‘re-purposes’ the classic stripey fabric to
create her bags.
“I’m such a nerd that I keep a swatch
of each fabric because ultimately it will
disappear” she says. “Really, you could say
that it’s a symbol of a beach culture that’s
dying out”.
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The lovely thing about Georgia’s creations
is that they literally smell of the beach.
“Even after the fabric has been washed”
she says, “it still smells like fresh air and
beaches. People say it reminds them of
childhood holidays”.
She also reclaims and re-uses vinyl PVC
from ‘retired’ bouncy castles which, like
the deckchairs, would otherwise end up in
landfill sites, and produces ‘limited edition’
totes, made from the fabrics of her rarer
finds, including vintage windbreaks, beach
trampolines, sunbeds and parasols.
“When I first found out that all this stuff
was just being dumped, I couldn’t believe it.
Because my mind is always thinking about
things I could make, it occurred to me that
I’d like a bag made out of that deckchair
fabric – and that’s how it started.”