Chicago content creator finds healing through the art of restoring vintage Coach bags

Helena Kim isn’t a naturally organized person. But her compact West Loop home studio, about 12 by 12 feet, keeps a place for every tool. Her closets conceal an eye-popping variety of glues, dyes, conditioners, thread and other supplies. Floor-to-ceiling shelves boast the fruits of her labor: vintage Coach bags, luxury purses rescued from thrift shops and restored to their original blues, greens, rich browns and chic black.

“I do have a very, very large collection at this point,” Kim admitted. “It was nothing I set out to do. But every time I went thrifting, I’m like, I need to rescue her! She needs help!”

Across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, Kim is known by her nickname, Yoonie, which is derived from her Korean name; she has more than 1.2 million followers. Her soothing short videos, where she explains how to hunt for and rehabilitate the saddest of bargain bin finds, feel like tagging along with your coolest friend or kind big sister. She prefers distressed and abandoned small leather goods, which she revives with saddle soap, conditioners and a jaw-dropping arsenal of trade skills.

Restoring these bags makes use of all her senses. When Kim stitches together loose panels, she’s gauging the tensile response of the leather. After she suds up her horsehair brush, she listens for the scrape of its bristles against the bag’s surface. As she massages a thirsty purse with lotion, her hands remember caring for her weary parents after work. Each bag deserves respect and curiosity for Kim; she’s interested in what it went through before they met.

“When I do really resonate with a bag,” Kim said, “I’m just emotionally connected to a bag, or I find this need to tell their story, or a story develops in my head.” She loves finding clues about past lives in thrifted purses: a set of bridal hair clips, a magazine clipping to bring to a hairdresser.

In return, Kim’s restorations are a gentle process. “There’s this Korean word that I always go back to,” she said. “It’s jeongseong, which is like — the respect for the item and the care and the thoughtfulness behind the act.”

Her videos convey this in their formula: Vacuum debris from the bag’s insides, brush the suede interiors, scrub the exterior, condition the leather, stuff to reshape the bag, clean up and polish the brass hardware. She addresses her Coach bags fondly by their style name, with a personalizing prefix: Miss Ergo, Miss Penelope, Miss Bleecker, Miss Chrystie.

Treating these wares tenderly isn’t just for the bag’s sake. “I think objects carry a lot of memories, especially for maybe people who didn’t have as many photos growing up,” Kim said. “There weren’t a lot of picture-perfect moments to be captured in my childhood. So, I think this is kind of my way of holding onto those memories.”

One picture in her studio looks out over her worktable: It’s Kim visibly unhappy at her kindergarten graduation. She had recently immigrated from Korea and didn’t know much English; more importantly, her parents had to miss the ceremony. They worked 10-hour days at the shoe repair and alterations shop they ran at the Gurnee Mills outlet mall. Kim spent long hours there throughout her childhood, first playing with scrap materials and making things to amuse herself, then helping behind the counter once she reached middle school.

“As a kid, it was kind of embarrassing, not something I wanted to tell my friends,” Kim said. “‘Oh, my parents repair clothes. My parents work at the mall.’ But looking back now, it was just such a special time and a way for me to get to spend time with my parents.”

Rehabilitating these goods, working with her hands and with something beautiful, is part of a long healing process for Kim, now in her early 30s. What once felt complicated has evolved into a deep appreciation of her parents’ skills and determination. The items she grew up around weren’t things people threw away, but possessions they loved enough to repair. Kim is doing this restoration work for herself today — and for little Yoonie in that photo, whose English name was going to be “HEL-en-na,” emphasis like the Shakespeare heroine. Kim’s first-grade teacher told her that “Hel-LAY-na” was prettier.

“So, I just never felt like I had agency over my own name,” she said. That makes being so well-known now as Yoonie feel like vindication.

She’s found herself at the crest of a wave. Coach has come roaring back into fashion, both for its vintage pieces and its contemporary lines; Gen Z and millennials love the brand, while items from the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s can go for hundreds of dollars on resale platforms. Dozens of Facebook groups bring together Coachies and rehabbers. Some members are fashion-forward or have always loved the brand; others followed a beloved family member, often one who left them their own Coach collection.

The quality of materials and construction is what tends to turn Coach into an obsession, said Chicago footwear designer Ray Serna. He worked at Coach in the mid-2000s and still raves about the company’s products. “They pay attention to every little detail,” Serna said. “It’s like working in an American equivalent of Hermès,” the top echelon of French luxury goods.

“The integrity of the surface of the leather can’t be beat,” Serna explains. “It doesn’t have any heavy shellacs, any heavy varnishes, any heavy plastics on it whatsoever.” That makes many Coach products exceptionally long-lived, if properly cared for, and often quite straightforward to bring back to life if they end up in an attic, a Goodwill or an estate sale.

Authentic Coach bags come with a creed stamped on the inside, along with an alphanumeric code that reveals the bag’s model, where it was made and when it was built, to the month and year. Kim often gravitates toward pieces from the late ‘90s, her earliest years in the United States. When those bags were new, Coach was out of reach for her and her family; in February, Coach flew Kim to view its Fall 2026 Runway Collection at the Cipriani on Broadway in New York.

Lots of people who thrift and revive vintage Coach bags are resellers. Kim is not one of them. Because of the depth of connection she forms with each piece, she only parts with them to give as gifts. Those late-‘90s bags she likes to work with correspond to a time when she felt terribly lost as a little kid.

“Every time I see a vintage Coach bag, I am kind of like, ‘Oh, where were you? What’s your story?’” she said. “And like, ‘How can I help you?’”

The only time Yoonie videos show her face is when Kim poses with the finished product, styled and refreshed alongside a great outfit. While she’s in her deep focus, not even her husband is allowed to bother her. So Kim doesn’t know what her face looks like when she’s working, even though she knows how she feels.

When she locks in with a bag, her brow smooths and her shoulders settle. It’s the posture of someone fully at home with herself, fully engaged with the story in her hands.