Luxury accessories business Elvis & Kresse has shaken up the fashion industry through a burning desire for sustainability and a passion for decommissioned fire hoses, writes Joe Bill

Fresh off the sleeper train from Glasgow after a presentation at the COP26 Climate Change Conference, Kresse Wesling is a titan of environmental entrepreneurship.

Canadian-born, and now Kent-based, she was creating green businesses before most of us had started dividing up our cans and cardboard. From developing sustainable mother-and-baby product business Babaloo back in the early 2000s to now running the beautifully crafted and eco-conscious Elvis & Kresse (@elvisandkresse) on the outskirts of Faversham… if you don’t already know it, Kresse and business partner James Henrit (Elvis) have been embarking on a 15-year crusade to save fire hoses from an eternity in landfill.

“At the time (2004),100 million tonnes went to British landfills,” explains Kresse. “We never had the idea that we were going to create a brand. I just started looking into British waste and I was so devastated by all the beautiful materials that I saw ending up there. I knew something had to change about that and perhaps I was capable of contributing to some sort of positive change.”

But because 100 million tonnes was just too large a problem for two people to tackle, Elvis and Kresse started looking for things that could conceivably be solved by a small team. And that’s where they came across the fire hose.

“It is beautiful,” she says. “It is this stunning red colour. It’s a very durable material in these rich, red lustrous coils of life-saving material.

“If you’re abusing your supply chain, and the pace and practices and the raw materials that you’re using are causing environmental degradation, then it’s a failure”

— Kresse Wesling

“It had a history. It had a life, but not just any life. It played a very important role. And we thought ‘How can something so beautiful and giving just end up in landfill?’. The hose rescued us and now we needed to rescue the hose. I started bringing it home.”

After a breakthrough meeting with the London Fire Brigade – which, along with other UK brigades, decommissions somewhere between three and 10 tonnes of hose a year – saving this beautiful commodity seemed an infinitely more manageable place to start.

RESCUE, TRANSFORM, DONATE

For more than a decade, none of London’s fire hose has gone to landfill, with more than 300 tonnes of material already reclaimed.

The team at Elvis & Kresse now collect from brigades across the UK and have even taken on hoses from an offshore oil rig that was being decommissioned. They create ‘utilitarian classics’.

“We don’t do seasons,” says Kresse. “Everything that we do is already pretty revolutionary and radical, so we wanted our products to be identifiable and accessible. We only make perennials and classics that people will use year in, year out and come back to us when they need a repair. Our approach to design is different because we don’t want to create more stuff for the sake of it.”

Wallets, purses, clutch bags, wash bags, belts, satchels, car holders and even travel accessories now form the impressive range of Elvis & Kresse, all in either the stunning red or, much rarer, yellow. The bag linings are made from reclaimed parachute silk (ripstop nylon) and all product packaging is made from recycled materials.

But while the brand continues to grow both in the hearts and minds of consumers, the beginning was all about rescue.

“Traditional design is based on conceiving an idea and then going out to acquire the materials to achieve that design,” says Kresse. “But Elvis and I are different. We start with a waste problem and we think ‘What is the next best possible life for this material?’. Or ‘How can we turn this into something so spectacular that it would change people’s minds about waste?’.”

Settling on fire hoses, they investigated where it was produced, what raw materials were involved in it, what were their potentials and what were their melting or destruction points.

“So we went to Yorkshire, where fire hoses are made and where the fire hose that’s used in the UK and around the world was invented. We go away with a list of what the mechanical and physical properties are. And that’s where we discovered that very similar materials with similar mechanical properties were being used in the luxury industry and have been since the production of complex polymers.

“So this is a material that is being used because of its properties, and they are causing it to be made – yet here is this fire hose that’s already 25 years old, that’s already done an incredible service to society, and now it’s about to go into landfill. And the idea was to intercept it.”

LUXURY FAILURE

The craftsmanship and care that goes into the Elvis & Kresse brand is there to see (or here to read) and it is reflected in the prices, which are akin to the traditional top-end fashion accessories market.

“We wanted to shake up the luxury industry,” Kresse remembers. “When we started researching the luxury industry, we were just so disappointed. A lot of people looking at it as wow, aspirational, beautiful products of high quality. But I looked at it as ‘What’s the point of it?’.

“I can see the history of luxury being about utility, craftsmanship and provenance. But I couldn’t see those goals in modern luxury businesses. And then I read a report that was commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund, specifically tasked with examining the luxury industry and its social and environmental performance. And there wasn’t a single company scoring above a C+. And I thought ‘Wow, this is an industry that is structurally failing’. If you’re abusing your supply chain, and the pace and practices and the raw materials that you’re using are causing environmental degradation, then it’s a failure.”

Kresse goes on to explain that the last three years have seen an enormous amount of change in the industry, with repair businesses and resale sites popping up.

“There’s a greater commitment to climate change and improving supply chain practices. But it is, to a certain extent, too little too late. The focus is still 100% on making money. I’m yet to see one of the large luxury businesses prioritise the environment and its people over financial goals.”

A huge part of the Elvis & Kresse project is to give something back to the fire service that provides the materials. In their first meeting, Kresse remembers promising the firefighters that if she was able to solve the waste hose problem, the brand would give them half.

“They thought that was hysterical,” she says. “I thought ‘Why shouldn’t the fire service be a beneficiary of anything we might do?’. It was a snap decision that became a cornerstone of the business.

“We do three things. We rescue materials. We transform them into beautiful things. And we donate 50% of the profits. If you distill it down to those three acts, you can duplicate that model across any waste you collect. And there’s no end to the problems we can tackle with that kind of creativity and mindset.”

Transparency is fundamental to the operation, and the team offer open-book accounting with their charity stakeholders and beneficiaries, again showing the brilliant model that Elvis & Kresse has built.

In 2017, the business partnered with The Burberry Foundation (yes, that Burberry) to grow its scope in tackling leather waste as well.

“We only use rescued materials,” says Kresse. “When we got to 2010, we were large enough to solve London’s fire hose problem every year. And that allowed us to look for bigger problems. And we discovered that the leather waste problem was so enormous.”

Small leather offcuts are deemed useless by much of the fashion industry, but Elvis & Kresse has found a way to turn them into whole new lines of products including larger bags and even rugs!

“When we started talking about our leather system publicly, we were approached by some people from Burberry who said ‘Hey, shouldn’t we do something together?’. And that has been a really wonderful partnership.”

This five-year partnership has seen some 120 tonnes of leather offcuts from Burberry recrafted into new luxury items, designed and sold by Elvis & Kresse.

“The best possible way to save it was to make other people love it. And in the process of doing that, why not shake up an industry and demand better?” says Kresse. “Rather than through activism and campaigning, we can demand better, by example.

“There should be no limit to our ambition if our ambition is to make the world a better place for people’s grandchildren.”

INFO: www.elvisandkresse.com