Coffee Has Just Become More Fashionable

I just love things that do double duty. When items do more than one chore, you really can get away with less is more and have it mean something.

My new favorite double-duty invention is the Coffee Cuff. Hopefully, this green innovation will change the way people wear their accessories and sip their coffee. Wait a minute! What do fashion accessories have to do with coffee? Let me explain.

Who among us wasn’t delighted when the “java jacket” came out? Burned fingers of coffee drinkers everywhere were so relieved to have that little honeycombed cardboard sleeve between them and the hot take-out cup that it was an immediate success. After many years of successful rule as the most-sought after coffee accessory, there is a pretender to the throne.

Move over Java Jacket – (**drum roll, please**) - here comes the Coffee Cuff. It’s a cuff that slips around your take-out cup in much the same manner as a java jacket; but, when the coffee is gone, the cuff slips onto the wrist to become an elegant earth-toned bracelet to be worn until the next take-out coffee.




Made by hand in the Contexture Design workshop in Vancouver, BC., Canada the Coffee Cuff was recently selected for the SWELL Future, Friendly Design exhibition featuring sustainable design from around the globe. Just look at the advantages to this product: eco-friendly, fulfills a huge demand, reusable, clever, inventive and makes a statement both environmentally and fashion-wise.

Coffee cuffs are made from exotic wood veneer like rosewood, ebony and zebrano. The materials are leftover “scraps” from the larger local furniture industry. These off-cuts would normally be thrown away with the rest of the industrial waste from these industries and become part of waste that is needlessly clogging our landfills. Contexture is able to salvage these woods turning them into Coffee Cuffs and extending their life through the Bentwood line of accessories.

Every year, billions and billions of java jackets are used for approx. ½ hour, then discarded to be sent to the landfill. Obviously, while the ideal situation is for everyone to bring their own coffee cup, this is not a realistic goal. However, converting all coffee drinkers to coffee-cuff users is far more realistic. Wear your cuff as a fashion accessory until coffee time, use it as a coffee-cuff, then slip back on wrist. So simple, so green.