Surpluses
Deadstock fabrics are leftover fabrics from textile factories who either overestimated their needs, needed to produce more than ordered due to minimum orders of yarn, or due to machinery.
We believe that using what already exists is always better than producing new - with that in mind we wanted to better understand the impact (or lack thereof) we had while using deadstock fabrics and found out that when using deadstock that doesn’t need transformation it has zero impact, e.g “zero burden”.
Ecological
When we can't find a surplus fabric to work with (which, gladly for us, is not that often) we meet our partners to see what they have been producing and we always end up finding the perfect fabric to fit the collection.
Most of the times we already choose from their ecological segment, but sometimes we find something we really like and challenge them to make even better.
Flax can grow in poor soil which is not used for food production - in some cases it can even rehabilitate polluted soil. When it comes to water, the use of rain water is the most used in flax cultivation, needing 60% less water than conventional cotton, saving 307L of water per Kg of fiber on its production compared to cotton.
Being mostly rain-fed, savings on water can go up to 79% and almost 60% on emissions as a big part of cotton growing emissions comes from fertilizers and pesticides used. By not using harmful chemicals, organic cotton means a healthier planet since it reduces the risk of acidification of water by 79% and the risk of eutrophication by 93%.
Lyocell is created using a closed-loop system that recycles almost all of the chemicals used. By using Lyocell from Tencel® we are sure it comes from eucalyptus from PEFC certified forests.
Only 2L of water are wasted per kilo of lyocell fiber and it has 72.5% percent lower CO2 emissions than polyester.
Recycled Line
Together with small textile factories near Covilhã, that have a deep knowledge in the art of making fabrics we started developing fabrics and knits of recycled yarn. So this line of products it’s not only extremely sustainable, but is also fully traceable & local - the colors are sorted and the recycling process is fully mechanical, so it’s waterless and there’s no toxic waste (no chemicals nor dyes are used) – and everything from yarn to sewing is made locally in a radius area of 100kms!
The recycled yarn we use is made from pre-consumer waste from portuguese factories.
By opting for recycled wool, on average we save 11Kg of CO2 per Kg of fiber when compared to virgin wool, making sure no animal unfriendly practices take place and there is a reduction in the need of natural, virgin fibres.
By using Recycled Cotton we prevent additional textile waste and require far fewer resources than conventional or organic cotton. Our analysis found we can save up to 1.27 Kg of CO2 per Kg of fiber just from growing and dyeing stages. We can also save 26% CO2 less when compared to conventional cotton.
Trimmings
Most of the buttons used in fashion are made from plastic - our supplier is developing more eco-friendly alternatives from wood to recycled paper.
Even with recycled options made in Japan, we choose a locally made zipper. To make it
easier to recycle, we opted for a plastic
slider instead of the normal metallic one.
Our labels are made of cotton ribbon- thus we’re saving, by incinerating cotton tags instead of polyester ones, the equivalent of 383 fully charged phone batteries per Kg of burned ribbon.
