“Sometimes you think, ‘why would anyone want to get involved in this thing?’ It seems like it’s all dread and sacrifice,” Luke Phillips tells Broadsheet. Talking about the environment can feel like a litmus test on optimism. There’s a lot to celebrate, but there’s a lot of heartbreak too. “The closer you are to the world of sustainability or [the] regenerative agricultural circular economy, the harder it can be to stay optimistic.”
Phillips, the founder of Collingwood-based label Into Carry, moved from Echuca to Melbourne to study industrial design at RMIT University. While working at a lighting design studio after graduation, he found himself hitting a wall. “The work we were doing there was super rewarding from a technical design perspective, but I lacked a little bit of purpose.”
As he led group tours around carbon-neutral distillery Four Pillars Gin, Phillips converted himself on the subject. “All of a sudden the narrative was switched in my head, which fed back into my practice as a designer: ‘What can I do to try to have some effect using waste materials?’” he explains. “It seemed like a great way to start, and it was also something I could do from my bedroom with a little shitty sewing machine I had at the time.”
Phillips started Into Carry in late 2019, experimenting with waste materials he turned into stylish bags and sold via Instagram and the Rose Street Artists’ Market in Fitzroy. By the end of 2021, he’d signed the lease on the ground floor of a co-working space in Collingwood.
Some designs are discreet about their upcycled origins, while others let the waste matter become a central design feature. There’s a snakeskin material made from netted fruit bags, Bonsoy bottles turned into backpacks, and local festival banners reborn as appliques. Its sleek origami structure gives each bag a set of clean lines that neatly frame the reclaimed materials instead of hiding them. Plus, you can unfold the carryall to make cleaning extra simple.
A range of designs are available to purchase online but you can also bring in a pair of old jeans to turn into a bag in a three-hour workshop. A semester of classes, over five weeks, teaches sewing fundamentals, bag making and mending techniques that you’ll use for life. “The first lesson is my favourite because most people don’t know how to sew at all and pick it up really quickly,” Phillips says. The studio’s cafe space, Into Coffee, also hosts regular community potlucks aligning with the semesters, and are known to blow out into something more like a house party.
“It’s a funny one because there was no intention [to form a community] and we don’t really put much into it,” Phillips says. “But the community is now core to everything that we do and it runs itself most of the time.”
Customers feel perfectly at home in the cafe. Many come multiple times a day, embracing the venue as an extension of their own lounge room. While he’s demonstrating where the bottle cap shreds are moulded into hardware, a regular strikes up small talk with Phillips.
“Busy, busy?”
“Busy, busy. Worky, worky, yeah. You’ve got the best spot,” Phillips says.
The customer points to the one in front, occupied by another regular. “Or that one.”
“Sue’s been coming here longer than you have, so she gets her way,” Phillips jokes.
Behind the counter, cabinet curtains are made from a bright orange construction material. “Someone emailed me a couple years ago and said, ‘We’ve got these ventilation bags.’ You and I don’t know what a ventilation bag is – coal mines in Western Australia, they’re burning through them.”
Two weeks later, a big semi arrived at Phillips’s studio door. “‘Where’s your forklift?’ they asked me. I had to borrow a forklift from Ocean Made Seafood down the road,” he laughs. “I still don’t know what they are for.”
Outside of Australia, there’s an appetite for Into Carry around the world. “Melbourne is often our third highest engaged city. Chile and Brazil are the top two countries.” Though the intent wasn’t to become an online upcycling resource, Phillips is happy rolling with it. “It’s a cool unexpected turn. I would love to take our model and transport it to a different country that has totally different knowledge, waste streams and environment.”
Into Carry currently has an online course for upcycling soft plastics and is testing out formats for online workshops so he can bring everyone along for the ride. “You can’t upcycle your way out of the waste issue,” Phillips says. “But what makes [Into Carry] valuable is that it’s a tangible everyday object that tells the story of reuse, and it breaks the cycle of linear consumption.”
This article first appeared in Domain Review, in partnership with Broadsheet.
