To put it very simply, we don't like Black Friday. We don't participate in Black Friday, other discount days or sales seasons.
Let me explain...
1 - Elvis & Kresse is not a fast moving consumer goods brand. We aren't fast at all. We are slow. Our materials are rescued and their transformation takes time. We build to last, not for obsolescence.
2 - We believe in good value every day, not just for a few days each year. Our pricing is based on labour, creativity and innovation; we have a highly skilled team, our goods are labour intensive and built to last. Our prices reflect the costs of running a pioneering ethical and sustainable business, which is more interested in impact than profit.
3 - We don't do seasons. We don't have different pieces for different times of the year, and we certainly aren't interested in the weekly collections or even 'daily-drops' being released across the fashion industry. Seasons or other forms of entrenched 're-freshing' naturally result in over-production and waste.
Our washbags photograph well in the snow, but they aren't just for Christmas.
What you care about matters, and now it can make a difference through every purchase decision you make. This month an exciting new shopping platform will be announced. One that has been in the works for over 10 years. A world-first technology that will transform every pound you spend into a vote for a better future, while connecting you with businesses that share your values.
Every transaction you make tells businesses what it is you care about. Whether that be issues such as climate change and worker rights, this new App encourages business to adopt new practices in these areas. We took a moment to ask founder of CoGo, Ben Gleisner, what sustainable luxury is to him and what it is he wants to see change in the world.
We believe together, our voice can be a powerful motivator for change! See the good work the CoGo community is already doing. Your voice can absolutely make a difference to how businesses operate and this new innovative technology lets you see exactly how. Elvis & Kresse are proud to be one of the founding businesses to join CoGo. Being transparent and listening to what our customers care about is now even easier.
For the first time ever, we will be keeping our doors open to the public for an entire weekend! On Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd December Elvis & Kresse will open their workshop doors for last minute Christmas gifts and ideas. Lots of lovely items will be on display and we welcome customers for a chance to meet Elvis & Kresse and get a genuine behind the scenes experience at our workshop. Find out more...
50% of our profits are donated to charity.
Creek Creative will host The Christmas Emporium in Faversham, presenting handmade items from a range of local artisans from Kent. Elvis & Kresse will be there with some wonderful and unique last minute Christmas gift ideas.
Shop Local – support local businesses this Christmas.
50% of our profits are donated to charity.
The Christmas Collective hosted by Plain English in collaboration with The Room Service invite guests to ‘meet the makers’ and shop a collection of beautifully crafted pieces at their stunning showroom in Blandford Street, Marylebone, London. This pop-up shopping event will be a relaxed, informal gathering of makers, designers and friends of brands looking for extra special Christmas gifts. Light refreshments comprising of festive mulled wine and minced pies will be served during the evening.
50% of our profits are donated to charity.
Because It’s Cool Because It Matters (BICBIM) is hosting a Christmas pop-up shop at Old Street, London to promote cool, ethical gift ideas, providing people who leave their gift shopping until the last minute – a staggering third of Brits – a chance to buy stylish, thoughtful and unique gifts! This is your chance to grab a last minute Elvis & Kresse item at the heart of Old Street Station.
50% of our profits are donated to charity.
In the past year, the Burberry Foundation has created a unique partnership with sustainable luxury company Elvis & Kresse to transform at least 120 tonnes of leather off-cuts from the production of Burberry products into a range of new luxury accessories and homeware.
By demonstrating what can be achieved when leather waste is revalued and created into entirely new products, Elvis & Kresse and the Burberry Foundation aim to affect real change in the supply chain of the leather goods industry. Where leather waste is usually destroyed, the partnership with Elvis & Kresse is disrupting traditional approaches and revealing new solutions.
Read more about this innovative approach in an interview with Kresse Wesling MBE, Co-Founder of Elvis & Kresse.
How did your relationship with Burberry begin?
Kresse: Burberry first approached us in 2014. They were closing out an existing five-year social and environmental plan while planning their next ambitious five-year programme. They were impressed by our commitment to materials rescue and charitable donations and we started to discuss how we might collaborate. As you can imagine it took quite a while to develop a plan capable of saving significant material and worthy of both our businesses. When Burberry launched their new agenda in the fall of 2017 our project was a key component of their vision and we are now implementing and evolving this plan.
What does your partnership with the Burberry Foundation involve?
Kresse: We have partnered with Burberry Foundation to solve our most ambitious material challenge to date: the vast amounts of waste created through the production of leather goods. It is estimated that each year, 800,000 tonnes of leather waste is produced by the global leather industry. Through this partnership, we will demonstrate how the traditional leather goods supply chain can be disrupted and changed for the better. We will also transform at least 120 tonnes of leather off-cuts from the production of Burberry products into new luxury accessories and homeware. Half of the profits from this range will be donated to charitable causes focused on renewable energy. The remaining half will be reinvested to expand our work in reducing and reusing waste, protecting the environment and inspiring craftspeople. 
Tell us about the process behind turning Burberry’s leather off-cuts into brand new products.
Kresse: No matter how carefully patterns for leather goods are planned, high quality, unused, freshly tanned and dyed leather falls to the cutting room floor as seemingly unusable pieces. Our system transforms leather fragments from the production of Burberry leather goods into components. The first step is to coordinate with Burberry production to ensure the smooth collection of off-cuts. When they arrive at our site in Kent we sort them into size and colour. We typically only start the cutting process when we know which item we will make, ensuring that we don't over-cut any particular shape. We then plan our cuts carefully, ensuring that we produce as little of our own off-cuts as possible. Each component of our system is then individually cut before it is hand woven, piece by piece, into whatever it is we need. This could be anything from a panel for a bag, a large leather rug or tapestry, upholstery, pouffe, or works of art.
Elvis & Kresse captures the imagination of people around the world, and you’ve sometimes had some unusual requests for bespoke products. Tell us about the most unusual project you’ve completed for a client.
Kresse: We designed and built an entirely circular kitchen using only reclaimed pallets and scaffolding wood. It consists of hundreds of pieces, with no two the same, and had to be built twice. We first built it in our workshop to make sure it was perfect, then we numbered each piece before taking it apart and then rebuilding it in its forever home. It is the most beautiful and yet utilitarian jigsaw-like installation; to us it feels like a genuine cross between a kitchen and a piece of art.
What are some of the other raw materials that you transform?
Kresse: London's hoses will always be our first love, but we rescue more than 10 materials on a regular basis and have created unique products with all of them. We work with failed parachute panels and auction banners for our lining materials and dust covers. We collect Yorkshire Tea Sacks, transforming them into our brochures, leaflets and mailing envelopes. Additional packaging and labeling is made from second hand shoe boxes and coffee sacks. As range staples we also reclaim printing blankets, split scaffolding wood, and Burberry leather off-cuts. Finally, we always enjoy welcoming people to our home and workshop in Kent, Tonge Mill. We began a restoration adventure here in 2013 working the same way that we make our products, with rescued or reclaimed materials. It is a difficult and slow way to renovate a building, but it is the only way to create a truly luxurious, bespoke result that doesn't compromise on our environmental values. 
Is there any other material that you would really like to work with?
Kresse: Unfortunately, we live in wasteful times. This means the list of materials we would like to rescue is incredibly long and represents millions of tonnes of valuable material. We know that our particular style of alchemy is a powerful solution for all kinds of materials but we have to focus. Right now, we are committed to solving the leather issue.
Find out more about our partnership with The Burberry Foundation, here.
Elvis & Kresse is a pioneering sustainable luxury brand established in 2005 to rescue London Fire Brigade’s damaged, decommissioned fire-hoses. For more than a decade we have been transforming all of London’s hoses into luxury accessories and donating 50 per cent of the profits to The Fire Fighters Charity.
We started Elvis & Kresse to solve a waste problem, and to change an industry by setting a completely different example. For more than a decade we have been redefining what waste, luxury and business are. Here are my fives rules for succeeding as an environmental entrepreneur.
Don’t start with an idea, start with a problem. We face unprecedented environmental challenges: we have lost 30 per cent of our bees, and by 2050 there could be more plastic than fish in the oceans, much of it too small to see or capture. If you want to run a truly rewarding, impact-driven business, choose one of these challenges. When I first moved to the UK in 2004, 100 million tonnes of waste went to landfill. This provoked an exploration that continues to this day and explains why when we learnt about the damaged fire-hoses in 2005, we knew that we had our problem – the one we could solve with Elvis & Kresse.
This means knowing what it is, why it exists, how big it is, what or who causes it, where it is and what makes it worse. We traveled to see the fire-hose manufacturer to understand how the product is made, why it has a health and safety lifespan, and what else may cause it to fail. We met fire brigades across the country to understand how they work with the material, the extreme situations it is designed to survive and the workload it has to bear. We researched the entire life-cycle of the hose, from birth to death. We also spoke with academics to understand the base materials that make up the products and did a lot of research around where and how these materials are used beyond the fire service. We became hose and hose-waste experts.
Be ambitious. Ensure that your solution could be scaled up to eradicate the problem. The love that we pour into each and every one of our fire-hoses is the reason why it becomes the perfect material for guilt-free luxury, and why we have been able to rescue all of London’s decommissioned hoses since 2010; however, it also means that there is simply not enough to make products for the mass market, and the process involves an intense amount of labour. Thus, in 2010 we started to tackle another problem: the fact that 800,000 tonnes of leather waste are produced as off-cut each year. For us this was a much more ambitious challenge to take on, and it required an equally audacious and innovative solution. Instead of designing products, we focused on designing a modular system, looking at specific shapes that could be woven together and taken apart to create whole new hides. This approach has the potential to solve the leather-waste issue, but only if we scale up, which is why late last year we were excited to announce our five-year partnership with the Burberry Foundation.
This encompasses environmental, social and financial aspects, the latter because positive cashflow means you won’t have to compromise on your solution. Just because you are a purpose-driven social enterprise that exists to do good doesn’t mean you will be immune to wider economic issues. Like any business internal problems such as the loss of key staff or suppliers, or other shocks can damage your business. We encountered virtually every possible challenge in 2011 to 2012 and only survived because we reacted quickly, moved to a new location (in a new county!) and set up our very own manufacturing during the 10 most difficult and exciting days we have ever faced.
This is something we talk through with Elvis every time. The world doesn't have time for exploitative, destructive businesses. Those days are gone.
On Friday, the 2nd of November Elvis & Kresse will be hosting a unique event at The Conduit Club in Mayfair, London. We will be 'making' on the first floor within the Maiyet Collective pop-up space. If you love our handwoven, rescued leather rugs then this is an afternoon you don't want to miss.
What does the afternoon entail?
This is a Meet-the-Maker event - with a twist! While enjoying tea and cake we will work together as a team to assemble a caramel leather rug. Hosted by our co-founder, Kresse, you will have an excellent opportunity to learn about everything we do and why we do it. The medium rug, which is 119cm wide and 178cm long (approximately 4 x 6 feet), will be handwoven from 805 individually cut pieces. These rugs are valued at £780.00.
One of the participants will then WIN the rug!
The leather rug will be separately delivered to the lucky winner with 100% recycled underlay. All other attendees need not fret, because they will all receive a credit note for £60.00 against any future rug purchase with Elvis & Kresse.
Where is the event?
The Conduit Club, 40 Conduit Street, Mayfair, London, W1S 2YQ
First Floor - part of the Maiyet Collective Pop-Up
When is it?
Friday the 2nd of November, 3:00 - 6:00pm
How much are tickets?
The cost is £60.00 per person and will include:
Numbers are limited so please book your spot as soon as possible.
Elvis & Kresse are pleased to announce another special opportunity to see their collection in-store and learn more about the brand. We would love to welcome you to our third pop-up and workshop event, which will be hosted by Open House & The Spare Room in Gateshead, near Newcastle. Open House & The Spare Room is the North East’s first planet conscious lifestyle store with community space offering recycled, renewable and sustainable products.
As well as being a “planet conscious” store, the owner hopes that it will also become a meeting place for the local community.
Key pieces from the Elvis & Kresse collection will be available to purchase for two weeks, between October 17-31.
On Wednesday, October 24th from 6pm we will have a ‘Meet the Maker’ event hosted by our inspiring co-founder Kresse Wesling. This is a fantastic opportunity to meet Kresse, learn about our Burberry Foundation Partnership and why we took it upon ourselves to solve the worlds leather waste problem. We will also bring lots of rescued leather for you to experiment with.
The 'Meet the Maker' event will be very limited due to high demand and space, so please RSVP to confirm your attendance.
Simply Email Amiera and confirm your attendance with your contact details. This is a first come first served event so please do reserve your space as soon as possible.
This pop-up is our first in the North and it is a brilliant opportunity for everyone that can't travel down to London to see our pieces in a convenient and friendly location near Newcastle. Please do take advantage of this and feel free to share with friends and family as well!
Location:
Open House & The Spare Room at Howay Inn
504 Durham Road,
Low Fell,
Gateshead
NE9 6HU, UK
Pop-up:
• Open to Everyone
• Starts Thursday 17th of October, runs until Wednesday 31st October.
• 9.00am to 4.30pm
• Closed Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays.
Workshop:
• By confirmed appointment only
• Wednesday 24th October
• 6.00 - 8.00pm, starts at 6.30
• Limited Space
• Free event
Hong Kong holds a special place in the history of Elvis & Kresse. It is where their journey together began. It is only apt that the first international Elvis & Kresse pop-up be held there.
If you have ever wanted to see our pieces in-store or learn more about us then this is a rare opportunity you can't afford to miss. Elvis & Kresse would love to welcome you to their two day only pop-up event held at Fashion Gallery, Mahka, in Sheung Wan.
A selection of Elvis & Kresse items will be available to purchase for just two days. This event will be run in collaboration with Hong Kong based independent brand collator TWYG. This is the first international opportunity ever to view our inspiring and multi-award winning sustainable luxury pieces. You will learn more about our Burberry Foundation Partnership and why we need to help solve the worlds leather waste problem, and discover our innovative weave technique through our latest Fire & Hide Collection pieces.
The pop-up will be on Saturday the 20th and Sunday the 21st of October.
This event is the first international one of its kind for Elvis & Kresse. It is a true pleasure for us to have our pieces showcased in a central and convenient location in Hong Kong, a city that means so much to us. Please do take advantage of this rare opportunity and feel free to bring along friends and family as well!
Location:
Mahka
G/F, 4 Wa Lane, Tai Ping Shan
Sheung Wan, Hong Kong
Pop-up:
• Open to everyone for two days only
• Saturday the 20th of October and Sunday the 21st of October
• 11.00am to 8pm Saturday and 11.00am to 6pm Sunday
If you have any queries or would like more information, please don't hesitate to contact us.
If you have ever wanted to see our pieces in store or learn more about us then this is an opportunity you really don't want to miss. Elvis & Kresse would love to welcome you to our pop-up and workshop event held at ethical retailer Brothers We Stand in Bristol, amongst a community of independent eateries and retailers.
Elvis & Kresse items will be on show for two weeks with a special and limited ‘Meet The Maker’ event. This will be run by Kresse herself for one day only on Friday the 28th of September at 6:30- 8pm. This is a really fantastic opportunity to meet our inspiring and multi-award winning co-founder, learn about our Burberry Foundation Partnership, why and how we need to help solve the worlds leather waste problem, and learn our innovative weave technique in doing so. And if you feel inspired then why not design your own individual piece while you're at it!
The workshop event held on Friday 28th is very limited due to space, so please RSVP to confirm your attendance.
Simply Email Amiera and confirm your attendance with your contact details. This is a first come first served event so please do reserve your space as soon as you can.
Our pop-up is a brilliant opportunity for you to come see our pieces in a convenient and friendly Bristol location. Please do take advantage of it and feel free to bring along friends and family as well!
Location:
Brothers We Stand
Unit 20, Cargo 2, Museum Street
Bristol, BS1 4RN, UK
Pop-up:
• Open to Everyone
• Starts Thursday 20th of September, runs until Thursday 4th October.
• 10.00am to 7pm
• Closed Mondays and Tuesdays
Workshop:
• By confirmed appointment only
• Friday the 28th of September
• 6:30-8pm, starting at 7pm
• Limited Space
• Free event
• Refreshments will be served
We really hope to see as many of you there as possible.
Best,
Elvis & Kresse
Several months ago we started talking with LIVARI, a zero waste womenswear label with three fantastic founders: Alysia Reiner (Orange Is The New Black, Equity), Claudine DeSola (Caravan Stylist Studio) & Tabitha St. Bernard-Jacobs (Tabii Just, Women's March).
Using the art of fashion as a medium of activism and hope, LIVARI is a collaborative space where the voices of women are celebrated and uplifted.
This handmade-to-order piece is an incredibly elegant interpretation of our Fire & Hide clutch bag. LIVARI selected the colours, material combination and designed the black-on-black pattern of the clutch. Our shared values and ambitions make this collaboration a true meeting of hearts and minds. Elvis & Kresse donate 50% of our profits to charitable causes associated with the materials we rescue. As with our Fire & Hide range we are working with Barefoot College, supporting the education of female solar engineers and the renewable electrification of their communities. LIVARI have etched their motto, JOY is an act of RESISTANCE, on one of the leather pieces handwoven into the clutch. This is definitely the kind of message you will want to carry proudly, from day to night.
This Limited Edition is available here.
If you have ever wanted to design and learn how to make a clutch bag then this is an evening you don't want to miss. We will have a wide selection of leather colours and textures for you to choose from. You will learn how to design and assemble the panels for your clutch. Whatever colour or pattern you choose, it will be entirely your own. The crafts team at Elvis & Kresse will then finish your piece and send it out to you in our wonderful reclaimed packaging. Find out more...
October 13th, 2018 from 11:00-17:00:This event will be the same format as the Clutch Workshop, but as it is a Saturday and we will have more time you may choose from a selection of pieces from our Fire & Hide Collection. You can choose to make a Fire & Hide clutch bag, purse, wallet, tote bag, washbag, cardholder, belt, or pick multiple items! Find out more...
November 8th, 2018 from 17:00-22:00:
December 1st and 2nd, 2018 from 10:00-16:30:On Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd December we will keep the workshop open for last minute Christmas gifts and ideas. Lots of lovely items will be on display and you will get a chance to meet both Elvis & Kresse for a genuine behind the scenes experience at our workshop. Find out more...
