Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Hermes – there’s no handbag or wallet this Hong Kong repairman can’t make good as new
- Denny Ng learned how to make leather handbags from scratch. Now, customers from all over Hong Kong come to him to fix worn or damaged luxury bags and wallets
- Repairs are complete only when he decides they are. ‘If I am able to spend five, 10 or even 100 hours on a job, then there’s nothing I can’t repair,’ he says
On the top floor of a nondescript office building in Hong Kong’s Tsim Sha Tsui district is Denny’s Shop, where customers can have their beloved luxury handbags repaired so they look almost as good as new.
Denny Ng and his two staff work in a space of less than 400 square feet (37 square metres) that’s filled with bags, tools, sheets of leather, paint, and cabinets full of fasteners, zips, rings and snap hooks.
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Hong Kong’s ‘handbag doctor’ is a craftsman with decades of experience fixing luxury leather
Most of the bags being repaired at the time the Post visited were from Chanel and Louis Vuitton, but the shop’s Facebook page shows all kinds of bags, including Hermès and Goyard.
Ng, 58, was repairing a Chanel bag on which the leather had worn out. He carefully added layers of plaster mixed with paint, let it dry and sanded it down, before using black leather to cover it. After that, he painted it with several more layers, drying it with a hairdryer each time.
“It’s almost there, just need to put more time into it,” said Ng. He will fix just about anything – for a price – and the repairs are complete only when he decides they are.