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An Organic Wardrobe

If your starting out your sustainability journey, its easy to look at your wardrobe and see the mass amounts of polyester based clothing that have come from fast fashion brands like Shein or Mirrou and cringe. If you feel that way, that's a good thing! It means that you want to cleanse your wardrobe; a good way to change how you buy is simply by op shopping, but if you don't want to buy second hand that's okay!

For today's blog I wanted to look at a list of brands that have safe and sustainable practices, and as I am based in New Zealand I want to focus on Kiwi and Australian brands as they are more available compared to American brands. The major things I want to focus on in terms of sustainability is clothing, food and microplastics. We will talk about ways to make your meals organic and everyday microplastics later on but for now lets focus on one thing; clothing.

Clothing Brands:

  • Kowtow (Website: Kowtow Clothing)
  • Maggie Marilyn (Website: Maggie Marilyn)
    • This brand uses multiple different types of organic clothing (deadstock fabrics, linen, organic cotton ect..) (https://www.maggiemarilyn.com/planet)
      •  One thing that made me skeptical of this brand was the fact that they use "post-consumer waste recycled polyester", this did concern me but they say this "We do not use any virgin polyester in our collections and instead only use certified post-consumer waste recycled polyester and small amounts of repurposed polyester from deadstock fabric." (this is actually good, have a look in the link above for the rest of the information on this practice) 
    • This brand also runs community events where people can come and buy the clothes, while also donating to multiple charities to help a prosperous future for New Zealand and Australia (https://www.maggiemarilyn.com/prosperity)
    • They are also very transparent about the way they supply their clothes and say this: "All suppliers and manufacturers we work with have signed our Supplier Code of Conduct which outlines the standards we expect to be upheld including animal welfare, environmental management, chemical and water use, greenhouse gas emissions, living wage, working conditions and waste management."  (Read more here: www.maggiemarilyn.com/people)
  •  AS Colour NZ (Website: https://www.ascolour.co.nz/)
    • Now if you're surprised by this making list, so was I at first. This brand actually has sustainable practices despite its fast fashion appearance. One of the things I noticed about their policies was that they have made statements saying that they work with a non-profit called Reemi, this focuses on proper period care to their workers and providing a safe and healthy working environment for those that make the clothing. (Read more here: https://www.ascolour.co.nz/reemi)
    • In the brands code of conduct it includes things like anti-forced labour laws and anti-child labour laws (Read more here: https://www.ascolour.co.nz/code-of-conduct)
    • The only thing I couldn't find on their website is what materials are used, it only mentions it being sources ethically. I had a look at a range of their clothes and they seem to only use cotton as their main fabric. (Read more here: https://www.ascolour.co.nz/how-we-source)
    • You can read more about their sustainability practices here: https://www.ascolour.co.nz/social-responsibility  
  •  Untouched World (Website: Untouched World)
    • Just by looking at this website you can see that they focus on sustainability well, they even discourage the fast paced trends by only producing two different clothing lines (Winter/autumn, summer/spring) and this is to minimize waste within the brand. 
    • On their sustainability page they have HEAPS of information regarding their practices, including certified merino, organic cotton and ecopossum which breaks down into the earth and doesn't go to landfill (https://www.untouchedworld.com/pages/sustainable-design)
      •  "We are proudly 94% New Zealand made, with the majority of our garments made right here in our Christchurch workrooms. This not only supports our local community, but reduces our carbon footprint on transport emissions. The 6% of garments that are sourced offshore are made with the same care and attention to detail that we pride ourselves on. We ensure that anything with our name on it is made ethically and sustainably by partners who share the same values we do." - This is a quote pulled from their website regarding how they source and create clothes 
  • If you do want to see more on what they do have a look at the two links below:

So that's a list of some clothing brands that are good, both for us and the environment! Hope this was helpful to you and that you go and support the businesses on the list! 

~ Rose :) 

  

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A little about me :)

 Hi, my name is Rose! I have been on a journey to start living my life as sustainable as possible for the last year and I wanted a way to keep a record of my journey with sustainability. This is also something that I want to do in connection to my faith as a Christian. As Christians we are called to be caretakers to this earth and look after those around us and I will include some Christian content too as that is primarily what defines me and my goals here! I decided to make a blog to help me keep track of what I am doing to help myself and the environment (and maybe even benefit those around me!)  In a world that is so focused on what the next big thing is or what celebrity is engaged, we are losing sight of what is most important for our livelihood and that's the earth we live on. This might not seem like a big deal now but in the next five years people will come to see what I'm saying and what other environmentalist are saying. I am by no means a professional at this (nor h...
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