Recycled textiles from the city’s world-renowned hot air ballooning scene have been put to good use
Bristol-based streetwear brand Rerun is proving its eco credentials are more than hot air by crafting messenger bags fashioned from balloon fabric offcuts.
Rerun’s home city is known as the European birthplace of modern hot air ballooning and plays host to the annual Bristol Balloon Fiesta. Now the historic relationship has given rise to a unique homage, using recycled textiles from the world’s biggest balloon manufacturer.
“Our bag is designed with cycling in mind, and Bristol’s well known as a cycling-friendly city,” explained Rerun co-founder Toby Thorpe. “We’re hoping it’s going to fly!”
Rerun was born out of a friendship forged on Bristol’s skateparks. Faced with a dearth of affordable and durable clothes that could withstand a battering, Thorpe and fellow skater Wilf Hastings began importing and reworking preloved workwear from the US.
Soon they were selling their upcycled togs to pals before embarking on a dumpster-diving odyssey of the world’s textile waste hotspots in countries like Indonesia and India. “It was eye-opening,” said Thorpe. “The sheer mass of warehouses full to the brim with secondhand clothes that people fell out of love with 30 years ago. It’s wild.”
Since then, Rerun has upcycled old Carhartt cargo pants into neat messenger bags, used deadstock fabrics for limited-drop shorts and shirts, and co-hosted sewing and screen-printing workshops with outwear legends Finisterre.
Its latest project took off thanks to a chance encounter with an old school friend and a fortunate stroke of serendipity. “The little brother of a guy we knew from school worked in a hot air balloon factory,” explained Thorpe. That factory was world-renowned Cameron Balloons.“It turns out that it was a five-minute bike ride from our warehouse,” said Thorpe.
It’s about being resourceful with what you’re given instead of having endless choice. That’s the exciting part for me
As Jess Siggers, Cameron Balloons’ marketing manager explained, the company has long supported the reuse of its fabric offcuts. “Very little of our fabric is wasted, but that we can’t use is given as offcuts to makers and community groups for recycling into new products and creations. Staff members take some home too,” she said.
When a balloon is made, the unused fabric is bagged and then either sold to makers and creators such as Rerun, or donated to charities, schools and scrapstores. “As we’re the longest running hot air balloon manufacturer in Europe (and the largest in the country), the offcut bags tend to be very popular and we regularly have waiting lists for them,” added Siggers. “Scrap materials from our basket section are also reused in this way, plus some of our staff take these home to use for side projects.
“We’ve been doing this for more than 30 years and we’re working hard to be as green as possible.”
Rerun teamed up with designer Theo Schaale to transform Cameron’s offcuts into a lightweight, durable and, above all, stylish 40-litre messenger bag. Schaale said: “I was sewing one of these bags from some silver fabric in my little front room studio, and I looked out of my window and saw one of Cameron’s silver balloons fly overhead. It was a really cool moment.”
He admitted that working with such a slippery, lightweight fabric was not without challenge. “But there are more desirable characteristics than undesirable,” he said. “I really like the transparency of it: the light shines through it really nicely.
“It’s been a bit of a lucky dip in the sense that we might have 20 colours to match and make something desirable: but it’s about being resourceful with what you’re given instead of using virgin materials and having endless choice. That’s the exciting part for me.”
Photography: Rerun
