More designers creating luxury from waste
Parisian luxury leathergoods brand Reco, founded by Spanish designer Bea Recoder last year, is forging a fashion-forward path using only surplus leather in the making of its limited-edition, highly tactile handbags.
An alumna of the Carven, Paco Rabanne, Chloé and Balenciaga accessories departments, among others, Ms Recoder turns to the network of tanneries she has personally developed over the course of her career when sourcing leftover leathers.
At present, each bag is either made in Ubrique or Chennai. Designs which demand a more complex technique, such as those which involve assembling particularly small pieces of leather, are realised at the Indian factory.
Ms Recoder favours making patchwork-like creations to get the most out of the leathers she sources and also operates a pre-order model to minimise overproduction, she recently told the Financial Times.
Due to the limited quantities of deadstock, only around 15-40 pieces are made in each of the hues advertised on Reco’s website or by luxury retailer Browns, another stockist. “For the moment I’m keeping it small, but in the future I want to get deadstock from everyone,” the designer revealed to the publication.
Read more about designers getting creative with surplus hides and skins in World Leather here and here.
Image: Reco via Instagram (@studioreco_)
