Fashion must
slow down
slow down
The fashion industry’s big problem is the massive amount of clothes produced each year, often without regard for our environment and the people who make it.
Brands may use words like "net-zero", pretending to be “climate-neutral”, but nothing changes the fact that every garment made takes a toll on the environment. For us, sustainability is about minimizing that toll as much as possible.
Before we even started hatching designs, we spent a year researching how clothes can be made more sustainable. These are the principles we arrived at...
Fashion trends are ever-changing. A staggering amount of clothes are only worn once or a few times when discarded.
It is our hope that classic, minimalist garments, clean lines and for the most part neutral colors will keep you from ditching an item because it's gone out of style.
So we design with timelessness in mind. It is our goal to create a collection of staples that can easily be mixed and worn with any wardrobe. And, if cared for properly, these clothes should be able to stay in your wardrobe for years, if not decades.
Overproduction is one of the industry’s biggest issues, with billions of tons of clothes ending up in landfills without ever being worn.
To address the waste issue, we decided from the very beginning that we were only going to produce small batches of each item. This way, we minimize the amount of potential waste and leftover stock. We also buy only the necessary amount of fabric to avoid being left with deadstock fabric.
Fashion as an industry spans the whole world. Transport emissions are a problem and so is ensuring that the people who make your clothes are treated well.
We handle all of our sourcing personally because we want to know exactly what we buy and from whom. To that end, we choose to keep both sourcing and manufacturing as close to us as possible.
Manufacturing takes place in Romania at our two production partners. These are places that we visit and one of our founders is employed there. Our materials mostly come from European countries like Germany, Portugal, the Netherlands, Romania and Turkey.
We source fabrics made of natural fibers because they pollute less when you look at their full life cycle, and they don’t shed microplastics. We use non-blended fabrics because they are easier to recycle at the end of the garment’s life. Finally, for the fabrics that can be organic, we choose organic, because organic practices have far less impact on the environment.
Our main goal with haberdasheries was to avoid plastic and plastic-derived materials as much as possible. That is why we choose buttons that are made of shell and 100% cotton for our tailored waistbands, the interlining that reinforces cuffs, and the collars of shirts. All of these are usually made out of polyester or other plastics.
The labels attached to our products - the main brand label, care label and size label - are all made out of 100% unbleached organic cotton. The swing tag is made out of FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified paper, which means that it comes from sustainably managed forests. Our packaging is 100% compostable and biodegradable.
Collection One is also meant to have a finite number of items - we think about 26. By the time we've created the main staples for a wardrobe, we'll stop adding new items and focus on other projects. This is our take on slowing down fashion by not creating a "constant need” or “fear of missing out” for our customers.
We know that the world doesn’t need another conventional fashion brand and it certainly doesn’t need more clothes. But it does need alternatives to the status quo. We hope to be one of those — for those who know that garments cannot possibly be as cheap as fast fashion would have us believe, and for those who are interested in sustainability. Hopefully, one day there will only be sustainable brands on the market.
We started Jorded wanting to prove to the world that one can make sustainable choices and have good business on their hands. Now we leave that choice with you as a consumer.