Billionaire clothing dynasty heiress launches Everybody & Everyone to make fashion sustainable
For Chou, an understanding of the environmental toll that the household organisation was handling the world started six years ago– a couple of years before Iconix Brand Group got the China subsidiary she had actually co-founded with her daddy in a transaction reportedly worth $56 million.
As the fashion industry has actually expanded, so has the wealth of the Chou household. South Ocean Knitters, the knitwear manufacturer started by Chou’s grandfather, was accountable for one of the very first foreign financial investments into mainland China in 1974. It is now one of the biggest suppliers of knitwear in the world, and, together with the Hong Kong producer Li & & Fung, is behind the Cobalt Fashion Holding conglomerate.
“I began developing Everybody & & Everyone from the ground-up, very first by getting the best group in place then by discovering the best vendors, partners and manufacturers who were currently making strides in the sustainability area,” Chou said in a statement. “I wanted this brand to be for each female, so body inclusivity, sustainability and positivity were going to be the backbone of whatever we did. We then constructed the brands sustainable & & technical pillars, which include activation, recycled, dyeing & & printing, naturals done much better, bio-based fibers and end usage to guarantee our products would minimize negative effects. We are sustainable to the labels sewn into each garment.”
And her father, Silas Chou, made millions as a financier in Michael Kors and Tommy Hilfiger. As an executive at Iconix Brand Group China, Veronica Chou played a function in the acceleration of the market– bringing American brand names to Chinese customers. Chou also functioned as the co-founder of the Beijing-based personal equity fund China Consumer Capital and as a director of Karl Lagerfeld Greater China.
“For our brand name, recycled is a big story for us,” states Chou. “Our t-shirts, our socks, our product packaging, our mailers, our labels, our sticker labels are all made from recycled materials that can be recycled once again.”
Image courtesy of World Resources Institute
The brand-new brand, which sells females’s clothing for every size from 00 to 24 and at costs ranging from $18 to $288 (most fall in the $50 to $150 range, given a quick scroll through the business’s new website) partners with companies like Naadam and Ecoalf for sustainable cashmere and recycled materials made from plastic.
“It was 6 years ago I began discovering sustainability and 5 years ago that I said that I needed to have a sustainable brand name,” says Chou.
Some clothing are also made with fabrics that have recycled silver in them– so that the clothing can be used multiple times without smelling or the need for a wash.
Digital printing is used in location of screens to avoid lots of water waste, the business said, and several of the business’s fabrics are not colored at all. instead, the company depends on an upcycling procedure by separating recycled fibers mechanically by color.
It was around the time that Chou had her children, she states, that she recognized the significance of making a brand name that was both ecologically sustainable and inclusive.
The business’s attention to its environmental effect likewise reaches its supply chain. “Most of our fabrics are knit near to where our garments are manufactured. That is certainly minimizing our carbon footprint,” states Chou. “I put a focus on having factories in America … our denim is made in America and in the future we’re looking at tee shirts and athletics to be produced in America.”
of the fashion business on the environment. The fabrics market primarily utilizes non-renewable
resources– on the order of 98 million tons annually. That includes the oil to make synthetic fibers, fertilizers to grow cotton and harmful chemicals to dye, treat and produce the textiles utilized to make clothes. The greenhouse gas footprint from fabrics production was approximately 1.2 billion heaps of CO2 equivalent in 2015– more than all international flights and maritime shipments integrated(and a lot of those maritime shipments and international flights were transporting clothes). The litany of disasters that can be associated to the clothing market extends to pollution, as
Veronica Chou’s household has made its fortune at the forefront of the quick style company through investments in companies like Michael Kors and Tommy Hilfiger. Now, the heiress toan estimated $2.1 billion fortune is releasing her own company, Everybody & Everyone, to prove that the fashion industry can be both environmentally sustainable and profitable. There’s no argument about the negative effects
Everybody & & Everyone applies the lessons that Chou has discovered sustainability to a brand-new style brand name that she hopes can serve as a design for how to weave sustainability into every aspect of the market.
Since that revelation, Chou dove into the world of sustainable manufacturing head-first. Through her family’s investment automobiles she has actually worked with business like Modern Meadow, which utilizes bio-engineering to make leather items in a laboratory. Chou has likewise led financial investments in Thousand Fell, a soon-to-launch producer of completely recyclable shoes; Dirty Labs, which is developing more sustainable laundry cleaning items; and Carbon Engineering, which is developing a direct air capture technology for carbon dioxide.
well. About 20 %of industrial water pollution internationally can be traced to the dyeing and treatment of fabrics– and microplastics from polyester, acrylic and nylon are contaminating the world’s oceans. Meanwhile, the rise of fast fashion has motivated consumers to speed up waste. Roughly one garbage truck loaded with clothing is landfilled worldwide every 2nd, according to a 2017 report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. That means consumers are getting rid of around $400 billion worth of important products every year as low prices and more “seasons” create an illusion of disposability.
Everybody & & Everyone has likewise partnered with the organization One Tree Planted to plant a tree for each purchase that’s made with the company. In addition, the company has actually calculated its carbon footprint from all of its pre-launch activities and has purchased and retired offsets to balance its emissions, Chou states.
Veronica Chou’s family has made its fortune at the forefront of the leading edge fashion business through investments in companies like Michael Kors and Tommy Hilfiger. And her father, Silas Chou, made millions as an investor in Michael Kors and Tommy Hilfiger. As an executive at Iconix Brand Group China, Veronica Chou played a role in the velocity of the market– bringing American brands to Chinese consumers. Since that discovery, Chou dove into the world of sustainable manufacturing head-first.”For our brand, recycled is a big story for us,” says Chou.