How to Fix Your Luxury Bag at Home

[Music] I think I did a very good job on two of my bag. Um I can show you in detail like previously the corner because some usage the color fade away become a little bit gray and uh now they look like new. And for the white bag, this bag is from couple years ago. This is a seasonal collection from Chanel. After some usage, you know, wet leather can get yellowish like this. And like the corners, it just not that pretty anymore. It used to be very shiny bed and now I think it's a little bit dirty. Look at how beautiful she is now. I think now she look like white enough like when I first got it. Okay, I get it. You want to fix your luxury bag and you run to a professional bag repairing store and they going to charge you hundreds and after you try once, it doesn't meet your expectation. You still have a lot of bag at home and you're wondering how can I do it. I have went through all that. I have repaired two of the most common leather that's used in luxury bags. This is lambkin and this is young cough skin and this is in white. As you may know after few years of usage back corner especially for lamb skin can fade color may fade away and for white bag it's quite easy to get stained or get yellow because they open pour I have actually tried to give it to professional before the first time cleaning cost me hund around 100 bucks Canadian dollars and after tax and fee around $100 US I understand this is a luxury bag. They want to play safe. So they just do a very gentle cleaning and some stain are still there. I wasn't happy with the result they did with the bag and they told me this bag need to be repaint but they going to charge me for few hundred bucks for repainting. Uh I don't think that's makes sense. So I did it by myself. Anyway, that's a route I went through. And in this video, I'm going to show you how I repaired my two luxury bags by myself at home. I would say the difficult level of fixing those two bags are quite high. If you could handle leather like this, other stuff like your boots, your leather jackets, your shoes, they're just 10 times easier. But I'm going to warn you though, it's not easy. It's going to test you a great deal of patient and you need to play it slow and safe. You need to testing out and you need to spend a lot of time. This bag took me 3 days to fix it. This bag took me over a week to finish it. If you did a good job, you can give your bag a new life. But if you skip a step or you are just not patient enough, you rush the process, you may ruin your bag. Full disclaimer, I'm not a professional bag restore technician. I just did on my own bag. I accepted the risk. And in this video, I'm going to show you some product I personally use and I think they did a good job. Every leather is different. Those are products work for my bag. I'm going to tell you what I did. Please take with a grain of salt. But who knows, you may learn how to fix luxury bags and you may open a business and make millions of dollars. I'm going to show you how. First step first, what is leather? Okay, cough leather, lamp leather, whatever leather, they're going to tell you how delicate the leather is. leather are skin and you are good with skin because you are taking care of your skin every single day and I think you should be very familiar with putting makeup like foundation on your face or how to do your nails. The steps are very similar basically three steps. The first step is removing the residue the oil on the leather and the second step is put the color on. The third step is put a protection layer to make sure the color doesn't fade away or it doesn't get on your skin or your clothes. If this is the first time you're trying to fix your bag, I will highly encourage you to buy a piece of leather that's similar to your bag. You can get in your local leather workshop. Get as close as possible the color, the grinds, and the shade. Test on the piece of leather you bought first before you actually working on this kind of bag. If you're gonna do this, please accept the risk. If you can't accept the risk, it's better to give to a professional. Let me show you what product I used to restore my bag. I did a lot of research and uh also test a little bit on my less expensive lilac product and I think they did a good job. I will list all the product name I use in this video in the description and uh you should be able to get it in your local leather workshop or official website. They are not expensive though like those colors like couple box. First of all, let's talk about basic care or daily maintenance. Leather can get dry. They like a little bit of moisturizer and uh I find them work really well for luxury bags. There are two types. One of them called nippa. This is more light can work well for more delicate leather like lamb leather and the other type is just regular type. The heavier one may able to penetrate the leather more. For any luxury bags, go for this nappa cream. they are more gentle. So, what I did is use this kind of sponge, just a makeup sponge. You just put a very, very tiny bit of it. I'm going to show you how. This is nipper leather. And uh this is a makeup sponge. You just put a very, very tiny bit of the product. And you're going to do it gently, but quickly on your bag like that. very gently. Just think about how would you apply your makeup. Same thing. This is skin, right? You want to do it quickly, especially for wet leather. Um, if you don't do quick enough, the moisturizer may discolor your bag. Look, after the moisturizer, your bag will look more shiny and more more nourished, just like your skin after a facial mask. And this is a foam cleanser. Cleanser. >> This is a product for daily cleansing. It works very similar like your foam cleanser for your face, but just without water. So what you do, this is a foam. Um, you just, same thing, you take a little bit of sponge, a tiny little bit, you go like this way. It's very similar like when you are washing your face, you are using your finger to gently remove your makeup. This is for daily cleansing. Just make sure you are doing that very small amount lightly. Now let's get to the difficult part. If your bag cannot be solved by this daily maintaining thing, probably the dirt already get into your leather. So the only thing can save your bag is repaint the leather. How to repaint your leather? The first step is remove the dirt and oil or stain from your bag. and to prepare your bag for color. So, the product is this one. Um, I like this one because it has number on it. One, two, three. So, you won't get lost. Same thing, very similar. You use this sponge. Take a little bit and kind of like lightly brush on the dirty part. Be careful with this because this is very similar to the nail polisher remover. It smells super super strong and if you do it in your indoor, it may damage your breathing track. actually breathe in too much when I restore this bag and I was sick for a couple days. If you are using this, make sure your room have good ventilation or you just do it outside. The second step is color. I hope your bag is not some random color, pink, blue, green. Oh my god. Then you have to mix the color to make sure it's exactly same color as your bag. But luckily my bag are black and white so it's relatively easy. I bought those two for my white bag. Flight white, flight white and the regular white because I wasn't sure which color will fits my bag. But anyway, those thing are not expensive. Those like couple bucks per bottle. So you can just get them all if you're not sure. And this is a product you want to use with the color. This color can be very intense or thick and you want to buy a thinner to make sure you can do it lightly slowly and you can put it layer by layer. When you mix the thinner with your color, it will make the color lighter and uh more fluid. So when you are doing it, it's easier. Those are thinner from two brands because I am using color from different brands and I just want to play safe. So I match the brand with the thinner because I don't want them to have a reaction and the ratio for thinner and the color. Um I think you just need to test it out. Test on the piece of leather you bought and make sure it's meet your satisfaction is close enough. And when you're doing on your bag, try it on the parts that you probably not see it daily. Um, for example, I tested on the inner side of the bag before I apply on the obvious part. It's actually very, very white. I think I put too much thinner. It's too thin. Oh, I think the sponge works much better. Ooh, I like the white. Wow. I think it's very pretty. Look at this. You probably won't see, but it looks very natural. I like this color. Wow. This is like my new Chanel color. This one is just like too white. It's too pale. But this one a little bit creamier. But anyway, you're going to try on your own bag on the hiding area and you will know what to do. And I found it's easier to use this sponge to apply it evenly. I'm going to do on other part of my bag. Uh I'm satisfied for applying the color. There are a couple tools I use. One, same as before. This is makeup sponge and uh I tried with my makeup's brush and also this is a professional leather painting brush. Very cheap. Uh one bucks each. I highly recommend you buy a ton. They are different from our regular makeup brush. This is very hard and when you're painting your bag, this one can get into the little detail and do a good job. Just buy a lot of them. Anyway, makeup brush did a good job as well. I just think this one did a better job. >> Okay, >> so what I did is put the product and mix some in the plate. um make sure I got the ratio consistently and the color match my bag and I just use this to apply on my bag. For each layer of color, you want to wait until the layer of color completely dry before you put another layer. That's why this bag took so long because for each layer I need to wait at least a couple of hour and sometimes I just got other things to do. So, this bag took me over a week. Here is what to do with the tape. So, basically, you buy this paper tape that easy to peel off and you tape it on the hardware and you just nip it in with your your nails and u now you can paint without painting on the hardware. After you color your bag, you want to protect the color because painting may get rip off. The last step is coating. coating can provide your bag the perfect shade. For example, like when we put foundation, some foundation are more matte. Some foundation are more reflective or kind of more hydrated similar like leather. This leather is definitely more shinier than this one. This one is slightly more matte. That's why you need to buy different type of coating. This coating is satin, so more reflective, more shiny. And this one will give you a more matty look. And if doesn't fit your bag perfectly, you can mix them up. From my personal experience, I found it was okay to use different branding from color or the coating. For example, I used this color for my bag and I use coating from another brand. This is okay. It didn't cause me problem. But as I said, please test before you put on your bag. How can you put the coating on? You want to shake the bottle and put a small amount on a plate and use a brush. Dip it small amount and paint on your bag. You probably need to put more than one layer of coating depend on your bag until you're satisfied. And you want to make sure you wait until the first layer of coating fully dry before you put the second layer of coating. Coating can look a little bit different when it's wet, just applied, or after a few hours when it's fully dry. So, you want to give it time and test it out after each layer of coating before you put the second layer. Anyway, you got it this far. I think you should be okay with fixing your bag. As long as you are patient enough and careful enough, give it time each step. I think you can give your bag a new life. And the same method can be used on other leather product as well, such as your leather sofa, your shoes, your jacket. They are just 10 times easier. If you can do this, other things are kindergarten stuff. >> Nice. I love good leathers and as you can see I got a lot of premium leather. They made me happy and being able to taking care of them made me more confident to owning more. If you don't have any luxury bag yet, this is my personal tip for you. This will be the same tip I will give to my younger self if I'm looking for a luxury bag. Stay with basics. Um, I find cavia leather is more resistant to usage. I use this bag so much more than this one. But this one stay like new forever. If you are a fan of Hermes bag, my personal experience is go for to leather for your first bag. It's very easy to take care. It's going to save you so much time. and also stick with basic leather, darker leather. I love my white bag. I think she is beautiful, but taking care of her is not fun. Anyway, I hope this video is helpful. Remember, be patient, take small steps, test it out, be careful, and good luck with your bag. [Music]