Paula Votteler is designing some of the most magical handbags that you’ll ever come across, and her inspiration comes from a pretty unusual place. Most of her creations are made with plastic waste and other discarded materials, but that’s not stopping them from looking straight out of this world.
Votteler is a young fashion designer from Germany, who has been making clothes since her youth. Her mom taught her how to crochet when she was just five, and she later attended sewing courses and learned embroidery on her own.
Votteler is currently working toward her degree in fashion design, but this wasn’t always her career of choice. Before deciding to pursue her true passion, she got a degree in packaging technology and gained a lot of knowledge about sustainability and recycling during that time.
She eventually decided to mix these two passions into one and started making bags from existing resources, hopeful they’d make the world a better place.
“I’m most inspired by materials that somehow come into my life. Fabric, beads, but also packaging, or anything I find on the beach. I love giving existing, perhaps unloved things, a new life… I want to make a statement that fast fashion should not be supported and that we treat our planet like dirt,” she told The Berliner.
