We have found an astonishing number of brands claiming to be sustainable whilst providing very little evidence. Most don’t even explain what definition they are using so it’s very difficult to say whether they are or not.
When you are a small company, you can only be certain that your production respects social and environmental norms where there is strong regulation and rule of law; so we only manufacture in Italy and Portugal from the highest grade fabrics of European or Japanese origin.
We provide details on the fabrics used on each garment page, and we provide photographs of the factories below:
Our suppliers, of course, adhere to all EU directives on waste and effluent. The community itself is constantly attempting to reduce the harmful impact of the clothing and textile industries. [1][2]
Together, this means our muscle tee costs a lot more than the average chain store T-shirt, ditto for everything else that we produce.
As the Europa report says: a key challenge in reducing the harmful environmental impact of the textile and clothing industries is: “Changing consumer attitudes of buying as cheap as possible and as many as possible”. You can find more on the negative impact of fast fashion - which we so don’t do - here.
We are aware that cotton is a commodity, uses excessive amounts of water in both growth and manufacturing and is a fabric best avoided where possible. We don’t see organic cotton as the solution as it uses as much water as non-organic and promoted savings seem to refer more the impact of the integral crop rotation than the organic nature of the production. [3]
We are working to source other options, but manufacturers and stockists typically do not focus on these due to low demand. Our Japanese plaid is cotton rayon blend, and we are actively pursuing the use of Lyocell (closed loop production with less harmful environmental impact) and Tencel (closed loop sourced only from fast-growing eucalyptus), both fabrics that hold colour splendidly, are as easy to care for as cotton, and have the luxuriously soft feel of silk.
Clothes recycling is better than nothing but it is still not the solution and blended fibres currently can’t be commercially recycled. [1]
We believe the only real solution is for consumers to...
buy less
Simply buying fewer clothes means fewer resources used up in their production, less noxious emissions, fewer garments heading to rag recycling and landfill.
pay more
Being willing to pay more means producers and retailers don’t have to drive such hard bargains with manufacturers and growers. The extra funds can go into safer working conditions, better effluent disposal, and higher wages…
wear it more
clothes are not consumed at the moment of purchase; the more times you wear a garment the less it cost you per wear, and the less it cost the planet per wear too. [1]
It’s a win-win for everyone.
