High fashion goes recycling

Photo by Shawn Poynter/Knoxville Magazine

Julie Stover is the national sales manager for Maggie Bags, a 14-month-old enterprise of Tennessee Webbing. The company uses seat belt webbing to manufacture handbags.

Our grandparents were permanently touched by the Depression. For some of us, the frugality born of necessity carried over the generations like rules: Don't throw anything away; Use everything to the utmost. We enter an era reminiscent of that economy, additionally imperiled by the specter of environmental calamity.

A number of Knoxvillians are finding opportunity in crisis. Knoxville Magazine takes a look at some businesses to see how useful and beautiful things can be rendered from the humblest raw materials. And in so doing, getting a little more mileage from carbon footprints made a long time ago.

MaggieBags

If "eco-chic" is the new thing, then Maggie Bags - a line of fashionable handbags made from automobile seat belts - may be about to take off. Julie Stover is national sales manager for Maggie Bags, a 14-month-old enterprise of Tennessee Webbing, a recycling company that finds reuses for this most utilitarian plastic commodity.

"Tennessee Webbing got contracts with seat belt manufacturers all around the country, buying up rejected seat belt webbing," Stover explains. They rework the 100 percent polyester strapping to sell to any business that needs extremely sturdy, resilient tie-down material. Woody Dew, co-owner of the 16-year-old Dew family business, elaborates: "The thing about seat belts is it all has to be made according to the same standards throughout the Western world as far as width, thickness, strength and so on. The slightest imperfection makes it unacceptable for that use. That's where we come in. It gives them a chance to not only avoid a cost but recoup some of the expense it took them to produce it."

Asked if there was a team of designers cooking up imaginative new ways to use seat belt strapping, Stover shoots back, "NO! That'd be US!" She and Dew laugh.

But how did an industrial outfit make the leap into high fashion? "We had customers over the years who had tried to make this stuff into handbags. So we thought about it and came up with our own design. We actually got the patent on this diagonal weave," Dew says as he and Stover point out a variety of Maggie Bags displayed in the otherwise grim warehouse setting of Tennessee Webbing's plant on North Cherry Street.

Using Dew's youngest daughter, 19-year-old Maggie, as the product's namesake (and principal model), "we launched our own handbag line in January of last year, and off to the races we went." The Dews brought aboard Stover, who previously had held a similar position with a gift company, to oversee this venture into fashion marketing.

"We're now in 450 boutiques nationwide, including Nieman Marcus, Dot.com and the Smithsonian catalog. Locally, you can find us at Bliss, the Nioka shop in the Southern Market at Bearden, and HoundDogs of Knoxville," says Stover.

There is a Maggie Bag for just about every daily need from carrying books or laundry to wallets, backpacks, and laptop and cosmetics bags and clutches. They adapt well to outdoor uses such as boating, picnicking, or a day at the beach. "Think about it - they are just about indestructible. The standards it was made for intended to make it last decades in your car," says Dew, adding "our challenge is to find new applications for it."

JulieApple

Julianne Kinkela Applegate worked and taught as a designer and consultant for years, associating with such stellar lines as LeSportsac, Stella McCartney, Gwen Stefani and many others. During that time, she cannily absorbed information about manufacturing and raw materials that would serve her well when she went into business for herself as "JulieApple," making a variety of stylish bags from sustainable products produced with a fair-trade ethos.

Photo by Shawn Poynter/Knoxville Magazine

Julianne Applegate creates stylish bags from sustainable products produced with fair-trade ethos. Her JulieApple bags can be found locally at the Glowing Body and Betsy and Babs.

"We are 'green' and equitable. And I don't feel like the two can be separated. I don't even understand the point of promoting green materials and manufacturing processes if you're not also treating the labor fairly. Our key mission is to be fair to every hand that touches the bag, from the raw materials down to the final consumer."

JulieApple bags can be found locally at the Glowing Body and Betsy and Babs as well as online. At her stockroom at Fireproof Van and Storage just east of the Old City, Applegate has an array of totes, purses, bags and pouches for everything from cell phones to laptops and cosmetics bags to totes large enough for carry-on luggage and, in a special order underway, bags for yoga mats.

Unused sailcloth and hemp produced from sustainable sources overseas provide the bulk of her raw material. All the plastics are recycled PET, mostly plastic bottles. "I've personally found, identified, and tested all the raw materials. I work at the house; I work at the coffee shop. Wherever my computer is. Design, sales, whatever needs to be done, I do wherever I am. I design all the fabrics, all the styles. I digitally create the prints," she continues. She draws the original design, sometimes making a prototype at her home workshop, then ordering in quantity from a manufacturer in the Dominican Republic (also location of the labor for some Maggie Bags).

In the end, JulieApple makes lovely things that are durable and utilitarian, lightweight but loaded with social responsibility. This all may be driven by practicality, but, as Applegate observes, "human beings are curious creatures. We demand fashion."

For more about these entrepreneurs and their products, visit maggiebags.net and www.julieapplestore.com

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