Part 1 - Sustainable Luxury Brand Built On Purpose - Conversation with Kresse Wesling CBE
- fazekasboglarka
- Jul 23, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Aug 3, 2025
The Radical Integrity of Elvis & Kresse: Rescue, Transform and Donate
Kresse Wesling CBE is the Co-Founder of Elvis & Kresse, and two time winner of the Cartier Women's Initiative Award. Elvis & Kresse is a UK-based sustainable luxury brand built on the purpose to rescue and transform waste materials like fire hoses, leather off-cuts, parachute silks and coffee sacks. They make a wide range of products: bags, belts, wallets, lifestyle pieces and homeware while donating 50% of their profits to charity.
Elvis & Kresse has been redefining the role of business for the last 20 years, not only in the fashion industry, but in the whole wide society.
What you are about to read is not a fashion story. It’s about values, systems, waste, and how to build a business with integrity, grounded in real-world problems and a deep sense of care.
A chance encounter at Burberry
In 2019, I first met Kresse in a large meeting room at Horseferry House, Burberry Headquarters in London. Through a partnership with the Burberry Foundation, Burberry provided leather off-cuts from their production and, Elvis & Kresse, by using their own pioneering technique, transformed the scraps into a new material that could be crafted into accessories and homeware. She led a workshop where we assembled leather pieces to make rugs, but they also used them for making panels for bags, tapestry, upholstery, pouffe, or works of arts.
Workshop with Kresse at Burberry Headquaters in 2019: making rugs with leather off cuts
From Canadian wilderness to the skies of China
When I asked Kresse what shaped her early on, she shared that she grew up in Western Canada spending lots of time in outdoors camping and hiking.
“There was one time, when I was walking with my dad in Rocky Mountains, I was probably 6 or 7 years old. He saw ahead of us on the path a mother moose, and he saw a young moose on the other side of the path. He knew that it would be a disaster if we walked between them. He picked me up, put me on his shoulders. Then he started walking backwards. Meanwhile I had this beautiful view of these two extraordinary creatures. If I think of the Canadian icons, moose is probably my favourite. So I had a lot of experiences like that. “
At the age of 16, she received a scholarship to study in Hong Kong, and she experienced a very different environment while living and traveling in Hong Kong and Southern China: “You don't really see the sunshine because the sky is so filled with pollution. It was hard to square those two worlds off if you've experienced one, it's difficult to accept the other one.”
Rocky Mountains in Canada (Source: adventures.com) and Guangdong (Source: dialogue.earth)
Finding freedom through entrepreneurship
Her path to sustainability was shaped by witnessing these two worlds and it inspired her to build a career to protect the environment and ensure others could experience and have the connection with nature as she had. Initially she studied political science but soon realized real change was slow and often compromised. A brief period in venture capital exposed her to entrepreneurship, where she saw people creating their own paths, writing their own rules. That revelation led her to see business not as a tool for profit, but as a platform to create meaningful change. She chose to show what’s possible when your own business is used to protect the planet and uplift people.
“That's why I'm so disappointed with the larger world of business, because there's such complete freedom in it. That freedom has been used largely to exploit people and exploit the environment instead of seeing business for its ultimate potential and ability to do wonderful, exciting, amazing things.”
Accidentally in fashion
Kresse’s journey into fashion was entirely accidental. After moving to the UK in 2004, her first business - biodegradable packaging - failed when the packaging degraded in transit, highlighting how ahead of its time the idea was. Then she turned her attention to explore her true interest: waste. While visiting landfills and waste sites, she came across decommissioned fire hoses and later met with the Fire Brigade. It sparked the founding idea for Elvis & Kresse. Rather than designing from a blank slate, Kresse believes in starting with real-world problems - like waste - and working backward to create solutions.
Fire hose, a durable material (it's nitrile rubber with a nylon woven core) – which is already used by traditional luxury houses - became the foundation. This philosophy is rooted in older generational wisdom - like her grandmother’s quilt, still intact 80 years later - when nothing was wasted and beauty came from reuse.
“Why are we creating new material when there's enough material available? We don't need new, and Elvis & Kresse celebrates that. And when we decided if we're going to celebrate it, we have to celebrate it at the highest level. We have to make products of exceptional quality, exceptional design and exceptional utility.”
They aim not just to be the best bags in the world, but the best bags for the world. Kresse highlights mainstream fashion’s obsession with novelty, which often results in environmental and human harm displayed as creativity. She questions how fashion can truly be self-expression if it exploits people or destroys the planet. For her, true innovation in fashion has been rare since pioneers like Coco Chanel. What frustrates her most is that destructive industries - like fossil fuels and fast fashion - remain legal and profitable, despite their irreversible harm to future generations. Her mission is to use business as a tool to challenge and change that.
“A lot of bags that exist might be beautiful and useful, but if they have degraded the environment or exploited people then they stand for nothing and certainly shouldn't be classified as fashion. Because what is fashion for? If it's supposed to be about how you express yourself. How is it possible for you to express yourself through the exploitation of other people? There's something deeply problematic about that.”
After 20 years of showing what’s possible, it’s still frustrating for her to see how slowly the industry changes:
“When we first started in 2005, people said we were pioneering… It’s 2025, and people still say the same things. And to me that’s slightly horrifying.”
All the proof is there — so why is it still considered radical to build a company that doesn’t harm? She highlights: we can all build and operate differently. Whether you’re a founder, employee, student, or consumer — there is space to pause, rethink, and make choices that align with your values.
Doing, Not Just Saying
“People fight in their own ways, there are activists that are incredibly important, there are researchers that are incredibly important." ... "You can be an innovator, you can boycott, you can be a doer like us. You are what you do, not what you say you'll do. I'm not demanding of people to behave other than the way that I behave. I'm just demanding them to try the things that we've already proven are successful. “
“And it would be really helpful, if the government just said, these exploitive materials are illegal. These processes are illegal because these can be very destructive. But creativity within a donut economy paradigm is actually quite liberating because you know your limits. This is the outside of the donut. This is the inside of the donut. I must exist in the doughnut, but I can go absolutely wild within those parameters. I think we would just see all kinds of true innovation again.“
Kresse also reminded me the principle that the most sustainable piece of clothing you will ever have, is the one which is already in your wardrobe.
Maybe she is our new Vivienne Westwood?
After our conversation I decided not to buy a new outfit for a wedding I attended in July. Instead, I wore my mum’s gold silk skirt — made in Hungary, bought before I was even born. It’s around 38 years old now, still absolutely stunning and one-of-a-kind. For the top, - with the help of the best seamstress from my hometown - we created something new out of a scarf I bought 17 years ago. I feel like I regenerated the energy of these textiles & pieces and I felt beautiful, new, fresh & crip in them! Kresse opened my mind to be more creative with what I already have.
Kresse’s story doesn’t end with rescued fire hoses — in Part 2, we dive deeper into what makes Elvis & Kresse a true luxury brand, how collaboration, leadership, and regeneration shape their work, and what we can all do — no matter our industry — to move from intention to action.
