Girl makes 5,000 ‘unique’ handbags by recycling old jeans

In late 2019, while cleaning the house and discovered several jeans that were still good but old, Hai Duong started thinking about recycling them into useful items. Duong immediately set about sewing unique handbags for herself.

Surprisingly, when Duong posted photos of recycled jean bags on social networks, many people showed interest and offered to buy them. Recognizing that need, Duong began designing “unique” jean bags from old discarded jeans.

At first, she thought of buying jeans at second-hand clothing stores, then many people brought their jeans to ask Duong to “turn” them into handbags. Ms Duong shared: “This job not only makes the most of the available denim resources, brings interesting products to customers, but also brings economic benefits and above all contributes to protecting the environment.”

From the first bag, Duong began to figure out how to create a professional handbag product, from shape to final details. Duong’s recycled jean bag products include backpacks, crossbody bags, bucket backpacks, two-strap bucket bags, polybags, square bags, dome backpacks, round bags… Thanks to the knowledge gained from a short-lived fashion design class, combined ingenuity With creativity and learning more from the internet, Hai Duong has created thousands of handbags made from old jeans.

For Duong, jean (often called denim, rin – peewee) is an interesting material. They are both strong and soft, with high thickness, fabric strength and durability, very suitable for making handbags. Every pair of jeans has different details that can be used to create decorative details for handbags without much thinking.

At first, because he didn’t have a general idea, he spent a lot of time making changes to it and learning how to do it. Also, because the bag’s stitching is quite thick, it is more difficult than sewing normal clothes. The types of materials are very diverse, so choosing the right material is quite difficult. Ordering material from multiple locations from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi for testing, Duong found an inappropriate area to correct the design, each time making a mistake.

At present, many young people who love recycling have come to Duong to study. Duong isn’t afraid to show what he’s learned from the gene recycling process. She enthusiastically “pretended” that thanks to social networks, some Vietnamese people abroad have come to find her recycled handbags. Over 5,000 handbags from recycled denim have been brought to market by Duong over the past 4 years.

Recycle Jeans into Sandals

TTO- What will you do with your old jeans? Tear it into pieces? Or throw it away? Brothers Mike and Lynn Stables, through their company Softwalker (in the UK), want to share environmental protection awareness with everyone by offering to recycle jeans into sandals and make considerable savings.