Product type Fashion design Introduced 2011 | Country Toronto, Canada Website www.vongruning.com | |
Von Grüning is a Toronto based fashion design house, founded in 2011 by Diana L. Von Grüning at age 16. The house focuses on the use of re-purposed leather from upholstery companies in order to create high end leather handbags.
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Design
Von Grüning uses a combination of new and re-purposed leather from upholstery companies to create high end leather handbag which each contain a number of different leathers combined to create appealing designs.
Founding
The company was started in 2011 by Diana Von Grüning at the age of 16 in Toronto, Canada. Initially, the brand specialized in couture with heavy embroidery and pret-a-porter clothing. The company began to develop leather hand bags in 2015 and in 2016 it discontinued as a clothing label and continued entirely as a hand bag and accessory label.
Diana Von Gruning learned to sew on her own and was very interested in fashion design and making clothing but did an internship in the upholstery industry at a small upholstery shop. This sparked her interest in the use of leather in the fashion industry. Diana was motivated to use leather that upholstery companies discard because of the amount of leather that goes to waste by these companies, she was disturbed by the amount of usable waste and soon made it the companies mission statement to use as much repurposed leather in their products as possible.
Development
Diana Von Grüning founded Von Gruning in 2011 as a high end clothing company. With support from family and close friends Diana would continue to develop the brand/clothing label for 2 years until being Discovered by popular Canadian Talk show The Marilyn Denis Show. On September 13, 2013 Diana’s episode aired live on national broadcasting network CTV where a small fashion show was held and a brief interview with Diana was done. The release of the episode resulted in the brand becoming particularly popular for a brief period of time and then becoming nearly obsolete as Diana gave way to complete high school before continuing to develop the company.
Diana started college at George Brown College for fashion techniques and design in Toronto, Canada in September 2015 and shortly after discontinued the label as a clothing company and proceeded to push the label forward as a leather accessories line specializing in the use of repurposed upholstery leather. Von Grüning’s e-commerce site was developed in 2017 in order to increase sales and inform the public of the mission statement. The mission statement guarantees that each bag consists of leather that has been spared from being discarded entirely. The Company produces all of its pieces in-house and does not outsource to manufacturing facilities overseas.