ABOUT ME

BORBOLETA: handmade, unique and sustainable.

I am Hellen and I am the creative mind and founder of BORBOLETA.

I am a Belgo-Portuguese creative soul and started studying fashion at the age of 15. But my passion for fashion started at a very young age. Scarfs from my mother were draped into evening gowns and shown during improvised fashion shows in our family's living room.

After 20 years of working for different companies and industries it was time to focus on my true passion, and BORBOLETA was born.

My sewing machine, my creative buddy for the past 25 years.

Thanks to BORBOLETA, I can do more than just create and sew, I can add value by giving new life to old clothes while protecting our beautiful planet.

BORBOLETA

BORBOLETA? Butterfly in Portuguese and for you, symbol of metamorphosis.

BORBOLETA is also a reference to my origins.

A butterfly embodies metamorphosis and no two butterflies are identical.

Just like my creations, it gives the their cachet.

Pre-loved fabrics

We all have clothes in our closet we are attached to but no longer wear or the first baby clothes of our kids we want to keep as a souvenir.

BORBOLETA, gives those clothes a new life by transforming them into something new and unique. So they are used again and no longer just taking space. My goal is to reuse as much as possible: not only the fabrics, but also for zippers, buttons, etc.

This way every creation is unique and tells its own story. Your story!

Sustainable

Beside using pre-loved clothes and fabrics I also work with pre-loved fabrics like for example curtains. I also work with scraps of fabrics or deadstock fabrics.

One fabric that I do buy is cork, It is a lovely material to work with but mostly it is nature's most sustainable material. Cork is the bark of the cork oak tree that is manually peeled. This process not only doesn’t harm the tree, it’s actually good for them. Stripping a cork oak of its bark also enhances the ability to absorb carbon dioxide; the seven million acres of cork forest around the Mediterranean offset 20 million tons of CO2 each year. No chemicals or pesticides are used and only eco-friendly dies are used.

Your wings already exist, all you have to do is fly!