First Look: Eden Tan’s old pair of boots is this season’s next It-bag

While the It-bag arena is incredibly crowded of late – with fashion houses dropping new styles and iconic reissues at a rate of knots – CSM grad Eden Tan is making the case for an old pair of boots. That is, an old pair of boots repurposed into a cute little shoulder bag. The first product in Tan’s NEW collection (read: the collection is called NEW), the aptly-titled Bootbag was designed to address the problem of “newness entropy” which Tan defines as our everyday items depreciating in value to the point that their material function is no longer of any use. “It’s a way to rehabilitate newness to non-virgin materials without the intensive processes of recycling,” continues the designer. “Here, the old object is the material, skipping the middleman and going directly from old object to NEW.”

Dropping today exclusively on Dazed Fashion is Tan’s new campaign film The Bootbag, accompanying the release of the new line. In the film, model and presenter Emma Winder rocks up to one of those old-timey shoe-shining stalls in London’s financial district, and just when you think she’s getting her pair of black pumps buffed, Leon the shoeshine reveals that he’s actually working on Winder’s own Bootbag. “We spent a long time looking around for a character we could shape the story around, someone who easily slotted into the backdrop but also stood out from it, and that’s how we found Emma,” says Tan.

Filmed right outside The Bank of England, Winder’s “first crack at acting” was a success, and she even helped out with the creative, getting involved in the styling for the video too. The inspiration for the film was a product of Tan’s conversation with director Werner Vivier, who happens to be the designer’s neighbour. “His kitchen overlooks my studio so he saw the whole process of inventing the Bootbag, including the agony of the many failed prototypes,” says Tan. “I mentioned I was thinking of taking the bag to a shoeshine to get a clip of them shining the shoes – when Werner heard the idea, his director brain kicked in.”

Despite the finished product, Tan was quite candid about the challenges of his NEW line. “Fabric is reliable, every metre is the same as the next and last, but when you’re working with old boots there’s only ever going to be one copy of that bag,” he says, “which makes a product like the Bootbag manufacturing nightmare.” But even with the process being a tricky one to figure out, Tan is still confident that they’ll be many more Bootbags in the pipeline. “Once the process is solid and we can take any boot and turn it into a bag, the possibilities for iterating are endless, so expect iterations and variations to come,” he says.

The Bootbag is available to order at edentan.co.uk. See the full film and campaign images above, and head here to watch our In The Studio With… Eden Tan

Models EMMA WINDER, LEON HERBERT, creative director EDEN TAN, writer/director WERNER VIVIER, producer ALEX AYODELE-OTELE, executive producers JAVIER ALEJANDRO, GREG SMITH, production manager RUBY UKAIRO, casting director CORALIE ROSE, director of photography JAKE ERLAND, focus puller ANTONIUS CRAMER, production designer MILLIE SUU-KYI, stylist STUART WILLIAMSON, make-up SAKURA KANAOKA, sound design TIM OBZUD, edit TENTHREE, editor OWEN O’SULLIVAN, edit producer CLELLAND ALLEN, grade STUDIO RM, colourist JAMIE NOBLE, colour executive producer MIKE COLEY, colour producer GRACE TOMLINSON