(CNN) — One evening, fashion designer Alexandra Hartmann was walking down a street in her native Paris when she spotted a pair of old curtains -- abandoned in front of a hotel in the city's Belleville district.
"There was something that really kind of attracted me about the fabric, it was fascinating," Hartmann tells CNN Travel.
Struck by the luxurious texture of the material and its eye-catching, reversible pattern, Hartmann's creative side kicked in.
"I thought, wow I could make something very cool with this," she recalls.
Now the designer regularly turns unwanted Parisian hotel curtains into beautiful jackets.
From curtain to catwalk
Hartmann transforms old hotel curtains into clothes.
Hartmann made her first jacket out of the material she stumbled upon by accident.
It was just for fun, and just for her -- until friends and family commented on the unique design, and she started to get requests.
So the designer contacted every Parisian hotel she could find -- pitching them her concept and asking for unwanted curtains.
"Every hotel, motel, auberge -- I just called everyone -- and I started calling the really posh ones," she says.
The project ties into Hartmann's passion for sustainable fashion.
The response was mixed. "Some of them were so, so nice and some people were quite rude," recalls Hartmann.
"We called everywhere," she adds. "Not just the fancy ones."
Thanks to perseverance, she acquired a diverse mix of unwanted drapes -- enough to inspire her designs and kick-start her brand.
'The story is woven into the fabric'
Designing and making the clothes is complex but rewarding.
The process of transforming decades-old drapes into high-quality clothing is a complex one -- not least because the amount of material is often limited.
"I'm not going to have a lot of meters of the fabric," Hartmann explains. "So I need to think, what is the weight of it? How is it going to fall? How should it be cut?"
Each pair of curtains has a unique texture -- and unique history, privy to the secrets and stories of hundreds of Parisian hotel guests.
Hartmann likes to reflect on this history as she reshapes the drapes for their new chapter.
"They all have a personality and it feels like the story is woven into the fabric," she says. "I just really try and make something unique and special."
Sustainable fashion
Hartmann is passionate about sustainable fashion.
Hartmann is passionate about environmentally friendly couture and sees reusing curtains as a way to create clothing with a conscience.
"I've always been really passionate about sustainable fashion because I know how the industry works, and how fast fashion is," the designer says. "Basically fast fashion is fast food,"
She contends that there's a growing consumer interest in "upcycling," the process of...
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