Leather Reimagined

Leather Reimagined: bag making using leather offcuts from shoe making process

Nelissa Hilman founded her eponymous footwear brand in Malaysia. In her quest for sustainable materials and creative partners, Nelissa came across FabCafe Kuala Lumpur. The FabCafe Kuala Lumpur team was tasked to design and create a set of 10 interlocking/modular bags for Nelissa Hilman’s showcase at the Kuala Lumpur Fashion Week 2022.

The objective of the collaboration was to only use leather leftovers derived from the brand’s shoe-making process. This presented a challenge as it required working with limited, small leather scraps that were often irregular in shape and color, as opposed to the larger leather pieces commonly used in traditional bag-making.

The output is modular bags fit for a truly circular fashion.

for People: Hope inspire people that waste can often be turned into something of value

for Planet: Trying to minimize leather waste by reusing to form small modular pieces

for Profit: for the brands - to create new product line using off cut leather. perhaps could inspiring other local brand to do the same.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

2016 - Present

#reuse #upcycle #material

https://fabcafe.com/magazine/kl/leather-reimagined-modular-masterpieces-for-kuala-lumpur-fashion-week/

https://www.instagram.com/p/ChmACXePzgW/?img_index=1

This collaboration is indeed a new partnership design. Where the shoe designer and maker have the resource which is the waste and wants to turn it into something of value and Fabcafe KL have the capabilites to design, prototype and produce.