What are Eco-Intimates?

As a small brand, and as two sisters who want to offer trendy, wearable eco-friendly products, it’s important that we do it with tact. And that means being conscious of the waste we produce, how we go about our daily fabrication in the studio and the steps that we can take to make sure to keep our environmental impact as low key as possible.

Like any tasty recipe, there are some key elements that go into creating eco-intimates. The three main ingredients that go into our eco-intimates are positive low-impact production, quality organic cottons, and plastic free packaging. Have a moment to find out more about it? Sweeeeet.

 

Positive Production

We see to the production of our intimates well, very intimately as they are all produced right in our small studio in the heart of Bremen, Germany. After the fabric arrives to our workroom, we handle the entire production process. This includes creating the designs, making the pattern pieces and all the sizes, cutting the cotton, sewing the garments from start to finish, tagging and packaging them up for the lovely you. Actually you can take a more in-depth peak at the behind-the-scenes of our undie production here.

 

Our collections are often ‘small batch’, which means we generally make a limited handful of each style to see what is hot and what is not before going into production mode and/or ordering in more textiles or supplies. Our boutique (which is just a few steps away from our sewing machines) has a humble selection of items as part of our showroom, but a large majority of in-store and almost all online sales are made-to-order. This means, more often than not, we only make the item when the order is placed. What makes this groovy is that it avoids over-stock and the unnecessary production of garments. And because of this, we also have the ability to offer sizing customization for our bralettes (within a sizing range) and thus in turn provides a better fit for you and less returned items to our studio.

We’ve also consciously designed products that’s purpose is not only to be hella nifty, but also to utilize fabric cut offs as best as possible. Sleep shades, reusable cotton rounds, and bralette linings are cut from the small end pieces of fabric so that our textile waste is brought to a very low amount. We never just throw away scraps - anything we have left over is kept on our storage shelves until a clever solution is found (like stuffing pillows or integrating them into our store décor), picked-up by local moms for DIY projects or donated to school projects.

The mix of small scale collections, made to order products and being clever about our cut-offs makes our overall small-scale production pretty positive.

 

Organic Cottons & Digitally Printed Textiles

Now let’s talk about cotton. Soft, cushy cotton. Cotton is by far the most common and widely used natural fiber in the textile and clothing industry. The cultivation and production of cotton consumes an extensive amount of water and the high use of pesticides in conventional cotton cultivation ends up in the environment which is not good for the soil, the farmers, those who spin the crop into cloth, and not good for the end enjoyer - you. The negative aspects of conventional cotton due to exploitation and toxic chemicals (yuck) used in industrial processing has created considerable pressure for increased efforts to promote the cultivation of organic cotton on a large scale. Since cotton cultivation and processing creates a mass amount of jobs worldwide, this push for organic farming has made positive and important changes to the cotton industry.

The use of chemical pesticides, fertilizers and genetically modified seeds are prohibited in the cultivation of organic cotton- yay! Controlled organic cultivation is carried out in accordance with the guidelines for organic farming. And although a uniform seal for organic cotton does not exist, the term 'organic' is protected by law and independent inspectors regulate compliance with the guidelines which then authenticates if a cotton manufacturer is truly organic or not.

So in short, organic is simply just the better, cleverer choice socially and environmentally. And when you have the option to opt for organic, why not do it?
The organic cotton that we purchase for our intimates come from certified organic cotton producers in India, both of which are regulated annually by one of the more rigorous certification programs for the monitoring of organic cotton production, ethics and social standards in the industry. But, because our studio -where we produce our garments- is technically not monitored/approved by this aforementioned certification program (though anyone could come to our open concept studio and shop and see that the manufacturing practices are fair and do not exploit workers) we’re technically not allowed to publicly announce by which certification program our organic cottons are verified by. It’s a technical thing, but we’re currently working on how we ourselves can become a GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) certified company. ;)

As for the printing process, our organic cotton prints are digitally printed to order which means that we calculate/estimate an order size and only that amount is printed- no less and no more. And we love love love this because it avoids deadstock fabric and the unnecessary over-production of printed cottons that may otherwise never be used. Digitally printing doesn’t require much water usage in the process, so that’s also a juicy bonus.

 

Plastic-free Packaging

As a mini brand, we're trying to do it better than the big guys. We don’t ship you plastic because we wouldn’t want to do that to you. One -time use plastic can be gross. Our packaging includes acid free and soy-based ink tissue paper (with little boobs on it), recycled paper hang tags and vegan stickers. 

The much-adored paper packaging (which is sewn in-house) is also designed on recycled paper. And the compostable mailers  that we chose to use are made from plants and non toxic, compostable resin. They come with two adhesive strips for at least two trips! So use them again if you need to make a return or hold onto it for the future incase you want to send something to a friend.

Ultimately, it's not in our interest to send you trash, just beautiful organic cotton intimates packaged delightfully. 

So there you have it - our three main ingredients for very happy panties.
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