Sustainable Textiles
It is not only important for us to use fair trade production we also work to source textiles that are sustainable as well. We design all our clothing with handwoven, recycled, or sustainable textiles.
What recycled fabric do you use?
The average American throws away 81 lbs of textiles every year!
700,000 tons of these textiles are sent to Africa, Asia, and Central America to be re-sold there. Although this can be valuable for markets in developing countries, this waste has become a huge problem because in many cases we are simply sending them trash.
Our producers go to their local markets and use these second-hand clothes to be recycled into new garments. They do this by (of course washing the fabric) then cutting new pattern pieces from t-shirts and button-down-shirts.
In Cambodia we get excess and remnants fabrics from large factories nearby that we recycle into small batches.
What other sustainable textiles do you use?
Many rural villages have a rich history of traditional textile production. Designing collections with these textiles not only gives us the opportunity to give more people meaningful work, but it helps preserve some of these techniques that are being forgotten.
Other fibers used in our clothing are baby alpaca sourced from small farms in the Andes, high quality Pima Cotton, hand spun wool from Nepal, hand dyed and hand block printed silk from Cambodia and India and mohair and wool sourced from small mills and farms.