#sparkchamber 072720 — Laura Langevin
From lemons to ice-cold lemonade on these hot summer days, #sparkchamber throws open the porch door to Laura Langevin, the creative force — along with production-side partner Vicky Gerke — behind Echoes in the Attic. Mompreneurs and zero-waste designers, Laura and Vicky co-founded the company in 2005 to re-fashion, re-design, and repurpose what some might deem toss-able. Echoes diverts landfill-bound XS textiles from designers and post-manufacturing to create their signature line of Canadian, handmade, upcycled, vegan-leather, small-batch, zero-waste eco-bags. To date, they have rescued and upcycled 120 tons of diverted designer textiles and vegan leather.
Each bag has an amazing mojo — people feel it. And with good reason! Both women triumphed over much in their lives, and the bags reflect that same spirit. From cast-off fabric, after their original purpose has been served, remnants of loveliness are rescued and given a whole new life — second chances given to the lowly, the discarded. Not that different from life and people really.
The company got its start in an unexpected way. “I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2003. When my hair started falling out, I was scared to death. I couldn’t imagine the thought of not having it, so I cut it off and sewed it to a bandana that I could wear. That’s when I realized that everything can be recycled in some way.”
The story continues, in her own words:
“I have a lot of friends who knew that I had gone through cancer and they like to connect me to other people who are going through cancer. People would call me and I would say, you can hang up on me after I say this, because you are not going to believe that I can say this, but I am telling you now as you face this fear in front of you — looking back on it, I would never have not included that part of my journey if given the chance, or given the choice, because the lessons were so deep and so pure and so long-lasting and so sticky — you just cannot let them go. The gift was given to me in that way and by those means. When you go through something really challenging it allows you to reach deep down.
The biggest gift I ever learned was the gift of surrender. Boy it’s a juicy one. People would come to my front door with a full roast dinner and all the fixings and they would hand it over to me and I had nothing to give them back except thank you. I had no energy, no hair, no means, no anything. I went from starting my days with a 10-km run to having nothing to give to other people. I was used to being in the role of provider — the person others could count on — and then suddenly the script was switched and I had to accept help from others. It was incredibly humbling and lovely and poignant and pretty all in its massive lesson.”
So, you could say that every bag comes with that silver lining.
Where to find one? As well as wholesaling to many stores across Canada, the eco-bags are offered at their webstore. Before the pandemic, they did lots of shows, events and festivals in their portable “Girl Cave.” “I miss that face-to-face with people. We have so many customers that have become our friends. We write personal notes in all of our packages that go out, I’m proud that our handmade business has so much heart. I miss having people in the girl cave. It’s amazing the amount of bonding and intimacy people feel when they enter that space.”
Follow along on Instagram and Twitter.
1.] Where do ideas come from?
I generate ideas at a rate of a million a minute. Everything I do makes ideas pop into my head. Even when I am going to sleep at night. There isn’t any time at all where life isn’t filtered through the Echoes In the Attic lens. Things are just coming at me and I am going, “Hmmm how can I use this.” I am the creative side of Echoes and my business partner, Vicky Gerke, does her part and backs me up on the production side of the business. Being on the front end, I’ve got to come up with ideas constantly but it’s not a chore. Everything inspires me. I watch what people wear, I’m immersed in nature, I’m around water. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have Echoes to direct all of this ideation energy into.
2.] What is the itch you are scratching?
I’ve had other design businesses, but Echoes is me. It’s at the heart of who I am — I cannot throw anything out. I hate to see waste. I can’t tolerate things of good use being tossed when they can have a chance at a second life. I want to keep textiles out of landfills, they do not belong there. And I want to make sure that I can take whatever I get my hands on and upcycle it into something new and different and useful. The fabric that we get makes us ask the question, “What would it best be used for?” And because of the design of our flat bags, whether it’s vegan leather or a piece of fabric — we designed the bag around the size of the pieces of fabric we were given. We crafted small sample pieces and wound up not wanting to throw those away, so we added the material as an accent on the front of the bag. This notion of giving something that is useful a second life drives everything we do. Trying to figure out how best to use something is so fun.
3] Early bird or night owl? Tortoise or hare?
I am totally an early bird and totally a hare. My business partner calls me the energizer bunny. She is the plodding tortoise. She loves to take her time and leave things until the last minute and then she gets her butt in gear. I am more like “Let’s do it four weeks before we need to have it ready” She is the calm in my crazy, creative storm. She completely grounds me.
4.] How do you know when you are done?
I am never done. But if I take this question down to the smallest degree and pose it the design of a bag, we are done when there is no more sweetness to be had. Once we’ve sucked all the sweetness out of something and it just isn’t the desired thing anymore, we switch gears and go after something else that interests us. So here we are now designing masks. We’re continuing to make bags — we even did a limited edition run of Earth Day bags that people really loved. We’re always trying new and wonderful things to make our bags beautiful and long-lasting. But applying this question to the whole company, I can’t even think about retiring, I love it too much.