Kim White Handbags from Recycled Vintage Automotive Fabrics
March 24 2009
It’s one thing to carry a purse made from rescued materials. It’s quite another to carry one made from vintage automotive fabrics. And we’re not talking Aunt Lu’s plastic-seated 1992 Subaru—Kim White handbags feature chic prints reborn from the interiors of a 1980 Mustang, a zippy 1986 Beetle, even the classic 1983 Camaro, among other industrial fabrics. White uses dead stock—never-used textiles intended for use in cars, trucks and vans that didn’t make it to the factory—to create her eponymous line.
A few years back, White bought an entire warehouse of automotive fabric, which may be the last existing stock anywhere in the US. Ridiculously durable—they’re made for seats, natch—each Kim White Handbag is tagged with the year and make of the fabric (so you know exactly what car your bag could’ve come from). She specializes in automotive fabrics from the 1970’s and 1980’s, when color was de rigueur in the automotive industry.
We flipped for the car-culture clutches, but its Kim’s collection of large handbags, in one-of-a-kind vintage floral upholstery fabrics, that we can’t live without. And OMG did you see the belts?
