In a compact 12-by-12-foot home studio in Chicago’s West Loop, Helena Kim spends her hours in a state of deep, tactile focus. The room is a meticulously curated sanctuary of restoration, where closets overflow with specialized glues, dyes, and conditioners, and floor-to-ceiling shelves display the results of her labor: vintage Coach bags rescued from thrift store bargain bins and returned to their original, vibrant hues of rich brown, deep green, and chic black.
To her more than 1.2 million followers across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, she is known as Yoonie. Her content has carved out a niche in the “slow living” and restoration community, offering soothing, step-by-step guides on how to rehabilitate distressed leather goods. But for Kim, the act of restoring vintage Coach bags is less about the viral appeal of a “before and after” and more about a profound personal healing process.
The process is an exercise in sensory awareness. Kim gauges the tensile response of leather as she stitches loose panels and listens for the specific scrape of a horsehair brush against a weathered surface. As she massages conditioners into “thirsty” leather, the physical motion evokes memories of caring for her parents after their long workdays. For Kim, each bag is not just an accessory, but a vessel for a story.
Helena Kim prepares to clean a purse in her home studio during the bag’s “spa day.”
The Philosophy of Jeongseong
Kim describes her restoration process through the lens of jeongseong, a Korean concept denoting the respect, care, and thoughtfulness invested in an action. This philosophy transforms a simple cleaning task into a ritual. She treats the bags not as products, but as individuals, often addressing them by their style names with a personal prefix, such as “Miss Ergo” or “Miss Penelope.”
Her digital content follows a consistent, calming formula that emphasizes this care: vacuuming debris from the interior, brushing suede, scrubbing the exterior, conditioning the leather, and polishing the brass hardware. This meticulous approach often reveals fragments of a bag’s previous life—bridal hair clips or traditional magazine clippings—which Kim views as clues to the stories the objects carry.
“Coach bags just look 3-D to me,” Helena Kim says of her hunts at thrift stores. “In the landscape of 2-D items, I just see this 3-D item and I gravitate toward it.”
A Legacy of Repair
The drive to rehabilitate these objects is rooted in Kim’s childhood. After immigrating from Korea, she spent significant time in her parents’ shoe repair and alterations shop at the Gurnee Mills outlet mall. Even as the 10-hour workdays of her parents were initially a source of childhood embarrassment, Kim now views that era as a foundational experience. She recalls playing with scrap materials and eventually helping behind the counter, learning that the items her parents handled were possessions people loved enough to repair rather than discard.
This connection to the past is reinforced by her preference for bags from the late 1990s. For Kim, those pieces represent a time when she felt lost as a child and when luxury brands like Coach were financially out of reach for her family. By restoring these specific items, she is effectively reclaiming a sense of agency. This extends to her identity; while a first-grade teacher once changed the pronunciation of her name to sound “prettier,” the global recognition she has found as “Yoonie” serves as a form of vindication.
Because of the way they’re tanned, many Coach leather products don’t have artificial coatings, making them exceptionally responsive to rehabilitation. Here, Helena Kim uses saddle soap to gently clean a purse’s exterior.
The Appeal of the “Rehab”
Kim’s work coincides with a significant resurgence of the Coach brand among Gen Z and millennial consumers. This trend is driven by a preference for sustainability and the high resale value of pieces from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. According to Chicago footwear designer Ray Serna, a former Coach employee, the brand’s vintage appeal lies in its construction. Serna compares the quality of these materials to the top echelon of French luxury, noting that the leather lacks the heavy shellacs or plastics found in many modern alternatives, making them uniquely responsive to rehabilitation.
For those interested in identifying authentic pieces, Coach bags feature a “creed” stamped inside, containing an alphanumeric code that identifies the model, origin, and date of manufacture. While many “rehabbers” operate as resellers, Kim differentiates herself by refusing to sell her restored pieces, opting instead to give them as gifts due to the emotional connection she forms with each bag.
The impact of this work is visible not only in the leather but in the artist. When Kim is “locked in” with a restoration, her physical tension vanishes—her brow smooths and her shoulders settle. It is a posture of someone who has found a way to reconcile her past through the art of restoration, transforming the “embarrassment” of a childhood spent in a repair shop into a professional mastery that resonates with millions.
As the vintage luxury market continues to evolve, the focus on craftsmanship and longevity remains a key driver for the community of “Coachies” and rehabbers. Kim’s journey from a child playing with scraps in Gurnee to an influencer flown by the brand to view its Fall 2026 Runway Collection in New York marks a full-circle moment of professional and personal vindication.
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