The incongruity of producing luxury goods in a world where we’re all trying to reuse more and waste less led Kresse Wesling into a business opportunity that reflects her determination to challenge without compromising on style.
Arriving in this country from Hong Kong in 2004, Canadian-born Kresse was conscious that as a ‘visitor’ to this country, she needed to ‘put something back’ into her new community. She’d launched an environmental packaging company in Hong Kong and turned her business experience to finding out more about London and the UK.
“I’ve always been interested in what and how much people are throwing away, so I went to the British Library to find out more about waste and landfill and look for inspiration for a business opportunity,” she explained. “Seeing how much space is given over to landfill was mind-boggling. We are always hearing that that there isn’t land available to build houses for people to live in, and yet thousands of acres were taken up with rubbish.”
Working with her partner James, known to everyone as Elvis, the first major step towards the launch of Elvis & Kresse was when Kresse linked up with the London Fire Brigade, who became excited at the idea of repurposing heavy-duty fire hoses. The hoses are designed to withstand high temperatures and large volumes of high-pressure water, but their composite material makes recycling them almost impossible.
“The materials can’t be separated for recycling so we started to research how and where this material was being used across industry,”
explained Kresse.
“During my research I discovered that some luxury brands were actually already using a purpose-made version of the material and I just asked myself what right does an industry like fashion have to create new materials when perfectly suitable material is already in existence and looking for a home.
“Our aim was to find a better way to produce luxury goods – creating something beautiful but also a product where we put values and ethics first.”
Starting with a belt, created with equipment they’d bought for less than £200 in start-up costs, Elvis and Kresse started working out how they could turn the material into desirable fashion items. As the company grew, the available resources grew, including an agreement with Burberry to take offcuts of leather and reuse them to make high-end products.
According to the company, none of London’s decommissioned hoses have been disposed of since the company was founded. These important hoses, that have been used by firefighters to save hundreds of lives, are being granted a second life as quality bags, wallets, candlestick holders and even cufflinks. Figures show the team has turned over 300 tons of waste, with Kresse having calculated that she has now rescued more waste than she has created in her lifetime.
“I’m a big researcher and Elvis is the creative genius. There’s so much knowledge and experience out there. Almost any material you can name has been studied by experts; universities are full of people who are thrilled that their academic research can be used in practical applications, we just need to be calling on their expertise more, and collaborating more, to get the most from our collective resources.
“So, I find out all I can about a material, this is what informs how we can give it new life, and once Elvis has that knowledge, we can start making wonderful pieces. As we became established, and our products began to get noticed, we went on to have some very interesting meetings with luxury goods companies, finding that the likes of Burberry were now seriously talking about upcycling. Companies who would never have dreamed of our style of working a few years ago had genuinely started to change. We really felt that we had moved the dial.”
Having decided at the start to donate 50% of profits from its Fire-Hose Range to The Fire Fighters Charity, Elvis & Kresse donated a staggering £63,727.12 in 2022, bringing its total donations since inception to £272,559.45. The charity provides mental health support, physical rehabilitation, and a number of other services focussed on helping the fire-fighting community to thrive. Half of the profits from Elvis & Kresse’s rescued leather goods are donated to Barefoot College, to fund scholarships for women to train as solar engineers.
As it grew in size, the award-winning company needed bigger premises and late in 2022 moved into its new, purpose-built, nearly passive base of operations in Kent. The workshop was built using sustainable and reclaimed materials and finished with ecologically beneficial solar panels, air-source heat pump, rainwater harvesting and a wetland-based sewage system.
“We’re proud to be a business in the service of its community and a business in service to the environment,”
said Kresse.
“We built our new base on a farm to change the typical relationship between growth and environmental degradation; designing our workshop the way we have, and putting it at the heart of a farm where we have initiated a soil-first regenerative agriculture project means we will be able to put more back, we will be able to enhance biodiversity and sequester carbon. Our aim is to be a net generator of goodness.
“Capitalism went wrong somewhere and instead of businesses contributing and providing for the population everything is concentrated on profit. Good business has to be genuinely meaningful. Instead of profit, we need to solve important problems and to restore ecosystems as we are doing so.
“Unfortunately, a lot of fashion is about making it cheap and selling it cheap, to the point where clothes are almost disposable. Far too many pieces are bought and never worn and then get thrown away. We need more legislation on producer responsibility, or, more importantly, we need enforcement of the existing legislation on modern slavery. We need legislation for the climate and for humanity. If goods are arriving and we don’t know how they are made and who made them, they should not be available for sale, not in shops, not online, not anywhere.
“I don’t think there is much out there that cannot be reused. Certainly, I believe that there’s nothing we have created as human beings that can’t be recycled. We just all need to try to turn on that creative side or our brains that loves to solve problems.
“Hope comes from action.”
Find out more about Elvis & Kresse at www.elvisandkresse.com