Coach Restore #2

Restoring vintage Coach bags is probably one of the most satisfying and maddening hobbies out there.  (Okay, and it's also a little random.)  Sometimes you get a completely different bag compared to what you started with, and other times you can hardly tell a difference.  My second restore is one of those examples.  Coach names a lot of their bags, and this one is called "Willis."  This is a bag I paid $10 for, and found a navy blue version of it hanging up with it so I bought both.  (Brand new, this bag goes for $300!)

Here's what I started with.  Not too bad, right?

Here's what the finished product looks like, before shoving in newsprint to help it keep shape.

So this one is a perfect example of a really subtle result, but required a LOT of work.  The turnlock (in the center of the bag) is all shined up in the bottom picture, the corners of the bag are shiny again, and the places that the brass on the strap rubbed are much less noticeable.  I also had to glue the hangtag back together, which had a front and back to it but was an easy enough fix with some tacky glue.

This one ended up being an interesting case.  It reeked of cigarette smoke, so I threw it into a rubbermaid container with a small cup of baking soda and another of activated charcoal.  I must have gotten a little too over eager since I should have waited until it was totally dry.  Instead I waited until it was mostly dry.  Because a few days later the bag was covered in MOLD!  It was fuzzy inside and out, so I wiped it down with vinegar and propped it open on our deck for a few hours on a warm day.  (It's a natural way to kill off mold in this situation!)  It looked pretty good after the first application of vinegar and a sunbath, but I did a second one just to be sure.  
For me, a proper restore takes at least 3 days from start to finish depending on the size of the bag, how thick the leather is, how many pockets the bag has, and how much hardware is on the bag.  This one?  Two full weeks.  Needless to say, I took some time off after this project!