Taking on Fast Fashion With Leather Bags Made From Luxury Brand Scraps

Dana Cohen witnessed the meteoric, and frightening, rise of fast fashion working for apparel companies in New York City for over a decade.

“We went from designing unique, thoughtful products to chasing trends and everything started to look the same,” recalls Cohen, 41, who was born and raised in Florida but now lives in Brooklyn with her family. “I watched fabrics get ordered and never be used and garments piling up on sales racks. We were drowning in fashion excess.”

It was then Cohen realised that she could do something to help while remaining in an industry she loved. “I couldn’t be complicit in the destruction of the planet and knew there had to be a better way to design,” she says.

undefined In November 2019, just a few months before the pandemic, Cohen launched Hyer Goods, a leather accessories company that uses the waste created by other brands—with fabric sourced from deadstock and factory scraps—to make bags, wallets, keychains, and blazers. The name Hyer is a riff on “higher,” or better, design.

Cohen’s mission is simple: to use scrap waste and “turn it into something beautiful.”

THE ITEMS

Hyer Goods focuses on leather because it is “high-quality, durable and can last for generations. The last thing we’d want to do is create more things that just end up in a landfill,” Cohen says. She launched an accessories brand, meanwhile, because accessories are small. “Focusing on small goods enables us to maximise the waste available. We even use the cutting waste to make our small leather goods, like card wallets and watch bands.”

Items include the ’90s-style luxe medium shoulder bag, which comes in colours like white and bright red and crocodile texture. There is also the luxe camera bag—available in a bright pop of fuschia pink and more neutral tones, such as camel—and the pocket cube bag, an everyday satchel with a canvas front pocket.

Hyer Goods also sells a deadstock leather blazer in a relaxed fit in black, chocolate and camel, and phone slings and wallets, as well as a handful of knitwear items, including the “salvaged angora scarf” and “a better beanie,” both created using leftover materials such as angora and merino yarn.

Cohen’s favorite style, however, is the luxe mini bucket bag, which comes with two different removable straps.

“It’s both classic and iconic in design,” she says. “I love that it converts from a crossbody to a handheld bag which enables me to wear it anywhere from errands to a wedding.”

Hyer Goods is currently selling a limited-edition, made-to-order Hello Adrianne hand-painted canvas bucket bag, featuring either a pair of tomatoes or a piece of farfalle pasta. A collaboration with the American artist Adrianne, dubbed “the tomato girl” for her depictions of canned tomatoes and other Italian foods, each bag is hand-painted in New Jersey.

Hyer Goods uses deadstock materials, discarded by luxury brands, which reduces the energy footprint needed to breed livestock
Lena Shkoda

“A good-quality bag can last for generations. I love the idea of creating heirloom products that can be handed down,” explains Cohen. “It’s the antithesis to fast fashion. I cherish some of my mom’s old bags, and I hope these bags have a similar future.”

THE PRICE

Many of the bags mentioned are priced around US$300, give or take. The deadstock leather blazer is US$375. The salvaged angora scarf is US$120, and the better beanie is US$75.

Besides shopping online, customers can also pop into the Hyer Goods store located on a quaint street in New York’s West Village.

WHAT’S THE GOOD?

Each year, 6.3 million tons of textiles are discarded in the fashion industry; in accessories, up to 15% of leather can be wasted due to the material’s natural defects, according to the Hyer Goods website. Most bag brands use either new leather, whose harvesting is bad for the environment, or vegan leather. Vegan leather may be animal-free, but it contains substantial amounts of plastic, does not wear well, and can take centuries to degrade.

By contrast, Hyer Goods uses deadstock materials, discarded by luxury brands, which reduces the energy footprint needed to breed livestock, as well as the waste sent to landfills. “In addition to using upcycled materials, every decision we make is made with the planet in mind, from our packaging choices to our designs,” says Cohen.

The company uses veg-tanned leather skins and tries to source leather made in Italy, directly from factories. Any canvas used, meanwhile, is deadstock, while the knits are made from luxury yarn leftovers, sourced locally in New York. Every supplier, meanwhile, must agree to the Hyer Goods Supplier Manual, which includes compliance with human rights laws.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Cohen says her goal from the start was to create the highest-quality goods out of waste.

“While we’re already using incredible Italian leathers and other luxury leftovers, I’m excited to announce some new sources of waste that are coming from the most exclusive, high-end brands in the world,” says Cohen. “In order to keep emissions as low as possible, we’ve developed an entire new supply chain in Italy, where the waste exists, and will be debuting a Made in Italy collection utilizing the world’s best leftover leathers soon.”

“Nobody really needs couture, to be honest,” said Demna after his Balenciaga haute couture show this week in Paris. No, most people do not need a bespoke gown that costs six figures and takes highly trained petites mains thousands of hours to make by hand. And yet.

Partaking in the official haute couture fashion week in Paris—which is rife with arcane rules about how the clothes are made—can pay off handsomely for the few designers left in the club. For the 15 or so brands that invest in the game, including Dior and Chanel, couture can multiply press and red-carpet opportunities, and have a trickle-down effect on sales of ready-to-wear and beauty and fragrance.

Then there are the orders, which can total in the millions for a single client. Wealthy couture diehards fly in for the shows and then quickly convene in cosseted showrooms to make their selections while munching macarons. Competition can be fierce, especially when a stylist nabs a gown early on for, say, Cardi B. When you’re paying this much to look unique, no one wants a duplicate.

Couture is famously over-the-top, and this season was no exception, with rampant feathered capes, obscuring hoods and trailing trains. But philanthropist, creative director and avid couture client Fredrik Robertsson told me he found the looks very wearable this season: “less PR showstoppers and more things people actually want.” He pointed to the calmer suits and cocktail dresses at Schiaparelli, which has in the past paraded out looks such as one bearing a faux lion’s head .

Couture can sag somewhat under the weight of its history. Craftsmanship, fashion’s favourite buzzword, can be a burden too, with designers feeling the need to embellish every gown with hand-embroidered butterflies and panoplies of pearls. But the following five looks show how a range of designers are making couture relevant today.

Balenciaga’s Sculptural Chaos

Demna, who goes by a mononym, is perhaps the contemporary designer most intent on bringing couture into the future. While he’s never far from Cristóbal Balenciaga’s archive—with its dramatic shapes and volumes—he’s also a student of streetwear. So the subcultures he reveres, from goth to skate kids, were present in his deceptively casual designs. Would the founder of the house turn in his grave at metal-band T-shirts masquerading as couture? Maybe not once he realised they were in fact hand-painted over a period of several days.

This top and skirt ensemble is made from unstitched cotton-jersey elements, which are then assembled and sewn together, and knotted on the model. It is a wearable sculpture, with the casual look of a pile of T-shirts.

Chanel’s Sublime Sweatsuit

Chanel, which is between creative directors after the departure of Virginie Viard, showed its haute couture collection at the Opéra Garnier. While many of the looks echoed the vibe of the classic theatre—including a sumptuous pink silk opera coat—some of the most successful moments were surprisingly dressed down. Robertsson, the Swedish couture client, exclaimed, “Chanel even had sweatpants!”

Shown on model-du-jour Amelia Gray Hamlin, the black Chanel sweatsuit was not technically a sweatsuit. It was a wool crepe jersey set trimmed in duchesse satin ruffles and organza. It was also shown in cream, and it will sell.

Dior’s Deceptively Simple Column

Maria Grazia Chiuri, one of the only female designers making couture, showed an elegantly restrained collection in a room filled with shimmering artwork by Faith Ringgold, who died earlier this year. Nodding to an Olympic year without being too heavy-handed, Chiuri presented Grecian-inspired draped dresses, flat lace-up sandals, and sporty tanks and bodysuits.

This long asymmetrical dress in cream-coloured silk jersey over a tank top is almost sporty, and a refreshing break from some of the more hobbling ensembles on display this past week. But that’s no ordinary tank top: It’s embroidered with silver-colored micro-tube beads that have hematite-clawed jewels on them.

Schiaparelli’s Faux Feathers

Daniel Roseberry, the charming Texan who’s revamped a dusty Parisian couture house, is a true believer in the art of couture. But he’s also savvy about its press potential, so this season, the show didn’t start until paparazzi magnets Kylie Jenner and Doja Cat had arrived.

The house’s founder, Elsa Schiaparelli, was a surrealist innovator who collaborated with her friend Salvador Dalí on one of the first trompe l’oeil garments . Roseberry continues his predecessor’s taste for trickery in his work. This jacket is embroidered all over with what appear to be small white feathers, but are in fact 10,500 silk-organza snippets. Because each “feather” is handmade, the jacket takes over 7,000 hours of work to create. Worn over a pair of smart black cropped pants, it’s almost work appropriate.

Jean Paul Gaultier’s Undressed Dress

Jean Paul Gaultier, which maintains a healthy and bustling couture business, has adopted the clever strategy of inviting buzzy non-couture designers to collaborate on its collections. Simone Rocha, Glenn Martens, Olivier Rousteing and Chitose Abe of Sacai have all worked it out on the remix with Gaultier. Nicolas Di Felice, the artistic director behind Courrèges’s Pinault-backed renaissance, was up this season.

Di Felice, whose friends span Paris’s creative industries, brought his cool-kid approach to Gaultier. Many pieces featured couture details like rows of hook-and-eye closures, and partially hidden tulle corsets. But there were Di Felice signatures, too: koala-pouch front pockets, narrow trousers, tiny party dresses. This cheeky gown is carefully constructed to look like the top slip is falling away to reveal a bustier.