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What is the heart of your brand?
Our vision is to offer is a more stimulating alternative to the bland essentials found across the stylistically-limited sustainable lingerie market. We live by three core values: respect for people, respect for the environment and respect for quality, and we commit to considering each of the three in each and every business decision we make.
Where do you draw inspiration from?
As an eco-centric brand, we’re heavily focussed on our fabrics, and inspiration will often come from the discovery of a new material.
The texture, weight and finish of our bamboo jersey fabric, for example, lends itself beautifully to a luxurious vintage loungewear look. And our DAISY playsuit and MONA french knickers fell naturally out of playing with the fabric.
The ColieCo studio is also surrounded by nature. We’re situated in a national park full of pretty spectacular and unique coastline, which inspires us inside and outside of work.
What materials are you using to create your line?
We work near exclusively with two categories of materials.
The first is fabric which has an inherently low carbon footprint. Here, right now, our focus is on bamboo, and we’re using a beautiful, lightweight cotton jersey-like fabric and a lustrous vegan silk alternative.
Bamboo is such an incredible raw material – it needs so little water, zero pesticides, zero herbicides and is fantastic for CO2 sequestration. Both fabrics we’re using are made from organically-grown bamboo, are manufactured in a closed-loop process (which recycles the
chemicals required to break down the bamboo fibres and keeps them out of the outside environment), and are OEKO-TEX certified.
The second category is what we call ‘zero carbon’ fabrics, which are those our suppliers
reclaim from line ends, offcuts and rolls rejected by the mass market fashion industry and otherwise destined for landfill or the incinerator.
Amongst these we have short run mesh fabrics from luxury lingerie brands, and offcut and misprinted scuba jersey fabrics, which are great for lingerie: smooth, stretchy and really sturdy for their weight.
What makes your brand sustainable?
Hopefully, everything we do!
We try to take an holistic approach. From our perspective, there’s no point in us using inherently low carbon fabrics, but then air conditioning our studio, using non-recycled or non-recyclable packaging, or shipping our products by courier with DHL or UPS for next day delivery.
So we’re continually reviewing and revising our end-to-end process to try to make environmental improvements, from sourcing through fabric usage to order delivery.
On a personal level why, how & when did you decide to create an eco-friendly brand?
Environmentalism has always been an important part of my life. Really it was the starting point in deciding where to go when I left school. And then lingerie was the area I got most excited about whilst studying fashion design at university.
I saw there was an enormous gap in the market in the design of more exciting and
inspiring sustainable underwear. Still now, the sustainable lingerie market is served primarily by brands producing pretty lifeless lines. I wanted to prove it was possible for eco-friendly designs to be fun and sexy too.
Do you believe in the future of humanity?
You have to, don’t you? Otherwise why do any of us try to make any kind of a difference?
What are some easy steps you can do to live a more sustainable & conscious lifestyle?
The most obvious to me is to get into the habit of just running a quick eco-check each and every time you’re thinking about spending your money. What are the consequences of buying this? Do I need really need it? Is there a better alternative? There are loads of fun and useful day-to-day eco-hacks about, but ultimately, it’s a change in mindset that’s required.
What are you most proud of?
Our customer feedback. It’s nice to receive attention from the media and elsewhere in the industry, but nothing drives us harder and inspires us more than our customers.
Where do you see your role in creating a non toxic environment for future generations?
I think each and every one of us has to take responsibility for our own actions. We’ve been sleepwalking for a long, long time into a situation, of our own creation, unlike any that mankind has seen before.
Governmental intervention and international treaties aren’t going to bail us out. Technology isn’t going to bail us out. Our immediate neighbours and our friends around the world aren’t going to bail us out. We have to make adjustments in our decision-making to curb our own carbon footprints and wider impact on the environment.
What are your hopes for the future?
For the immediate future, that we see the kind of growth in conscious consumerism required to give industry cause to change its course. Investment in sustainable technologies and alternatives isn’t close where it needs to be, and only changes in people’s shopping habits is likely to change business and financial investment decisions.
What is your mission? Call to action?
We want to connect with a broader demographic and introduce new consumers to the sustainable fashion market. There’s a perception that sustainable clothing is drab, lifeless, brown and grey, and, frankly, boring. It’s an image which isn’t going to help persuade particularly young people who aren’t already on board to consider exploring the market. We want to help tear up that image.
We also work as hard as we can to support other independent small businesses, because we believe that this is where innovation is fostered.
Indies also offer an authenticity, transparency and care that just isn’t matched by the multinationals, and they’ll be the drivers and enablers of the circular economy.
How do you think we can convince the fashion world to switch to sustainable practices?
Again, it will be consumer trends that will force change. Legislation can be bent, bypassed and ignored; it’s only when the multinationals see a difference in the bottom line that they’ll act in earnest.
I think awareness is rising. People are starting to be more discerning, and to dig a little more before they spend. Conscious consumers are getting wise to greenwashing and advertising gimmicks like sustainable lines and limited collections and are saying, “look, that’s just not good enough”. They’re demanding transparency and they’re demanding not just a commitment to, but action representing wholesale change. It’s great to see.
How do you vote with your dollar?
In short, you have to think about whether you have an opportunity to do so every time you spend.
What are some of the major challenges you have met? What are some of the greatest moments?
It isn’t easy entering the industry as an independent startup. Getting exposure I think is difficult – the social media giants work in favour of the established megabrands, for example – and the industry is quite a closed shop, so building a network of trusted suppliers is difficult enterprise and takes time.
As for the greatest moments, opening our first purpose-built in-house studio was a fantastic landmark, and each new release is always a thrill!
Life Motto?
Not sure how appropriate it is here, but in the ColieCo studio we live very simply by, “Don’t be a dick!”
What does the term “Ecovocateur” mean to you?
I think when history looks back on the direct action of grassroots green movements around the globe and considers how much they’ve done – and continue to do – to raise awareness, it’ll be a lot kinder to them than the contemporary mainstream media is.
