“Did you ever think that waste could be beautiful?” sustainable fashion activist Aditi Mayer asks in a new video released by Coach. She’s speaking with Ammu and Priya, designers at KH Export in Chennai, India, a family-run leather manufacturing company working with Coach since 1987. The two are responsible for creating bags for the brand’s new circular fashion line, Coachtopia.
In the YouTube docuseries “The Road to Circularity,” Coach highlights each aspect of its leather supply chain used to develop Coachtopia bags. “Since the founding of Coachtopia, we’ve been working closely with a wide range of inspiring young leaders through our Beta Community — and we have heard how frustrating fashion’s lack of transparency can be to this generation,” Joon Silverstein, SVP, Global Marketing and Sustainability at Coach, and Head of Coachtopia, said in a press release.
The bags, made from leather scraps that would otherwise be thrown away, are also meant to be traceable and deconstructable to be upcycled again and again. While leather is technically a byproduct of the cattle industry, it’s still responsible for a significant amount of sustainability concerns. For example, 90% of all leather uses carcinogenic chromium for tanning. When you consider that housands of pounds of leather ultimately go to waste for reasons as simple as the grain, it is absurd that the scraps aren’t used to make new pieces.
Throughout the first video in the Coachtopia docuseries, titled “Making the Waste,” we see different methods Coach uses to reduce waste, including the making of “Inocra,” a recycled panel created from dozens of different sizes, colors, and types of factory leather waste. The result is a multi-color suede-like handbag in classic Coach silhouettes. “It’s startling to think that, because of our cultural mindset around perfection, the natural grain of leather can be seen as a defect, leading to more waste,” Mayer says.But while the product itself is important, the video also highlights how the factory works with the community to create better, safer jobs. KH Exports has a training academy to help artisans further their technical skills.
Mayer also stresses that circularity and sustainability are not “just about changing the way we make things but changing the way we think.” Essentially, using waste to make new beautiful handbags is a step forward in tackling waste issues, but understanding why we have so much in the first place is where we need to start.
Watch the first episode of Coach's new Coachtopia docuseries in full below:
