Dodworth, England –
Last year, when 1990s suede fringe jackets began to make a comeback, UK-based vintage clothing company Glass Onion Vintage decided to order four tons of suede from a US supplier.
With that shipment came a once-in-a-lifetime discovery.
A total of 3.5 million items of recycled clothing are stocked in our warehouses every day. Occasionally, staff will dig up gems and some customers will pay good money, but what staff member Sophie Upson finds, Glass Onion Vintage refuses to sell it.
Upson was tasked with examining these suede items, inspecting them for quality, and determining which ones could be resold or redesigned.
It took her a week to pull it all off, and by then, after 12 years of mastering the skill, she knew exactly the texture she was looking for.
“That’s old,” she says to herself as she pulls out what has become an Aboriginal Canadian jacket. Looking in her pocket, she thought it was too elaborate for a stage prop.
“When they put this linen fabric inside, it could have been the 1950s, it could have been the ’40s,” she explained to CTV News.
She told her boss, John Hickling, that he had to come see it.
“It’s beyond what I know,” Upson said.
While other historical items are up for auction, this jacket has a different fate.
Hickling told CTV News, “I want to know as much as I can about it. ‘We want to do the right thing with our clothes.'”
Head of Marketing Alice Leadbetter then took the lead. She uploaded the video to her TikTok, and when she woke up the next day, it had half a million views, with a message from a Canadian expert asking specific questions about the beadwork patterns, the stitching, and the feel of the suede. was delivered.
Six months later, they’ve come together like this.
Leadbetter was told that the olive green chain stitch on the pocket was a technique taught in schools in the Red River area before the 1850s. She was also told it was a hunting jacket.
“Some museums suggest that this may have been created by an artist and may have been created for a family member or a fur trader,” she added.
The jacket is handcrafted with amazing detail, which only adds to its historical significance.
“We’re still looking for answers to narrow it down further in hopes of finding the community it came from,” said an email from an expert asking for more photos. The leadbetter, who also answered
(Daniel Hamajan/CTV News)
Like millions of other items in this warehouse, the jacket must have been donated to a thrift store, discarded, and then sold to a recycling company in the United States.
(Daniel Hamajan/CTV News)
“From there, it was taken to different parts of the world, perhaps to Pakistan or Thailand,” Hickling explains.
(Daniel Hamajan/CTV News)
Incredibly, it must have also returned the ordered suede to the vintage dealer who supplied this company in a small English market town.
(Daniel Hamajan/CTV News)
“The history, the recycling process, the fact that it ended up in South Yorkshire, the complete journey that our expert sorters found it, added to the story.
A suede jacket in a glass onion vintage warehouse. (Daniele Hamamdjian / CTV News)
Now it’s a matter of completing the journey back to the original home.
(Daniel Hamajan/CTV News)
(Daniel Hamajan/CTV News)