Billionaire clothing dynasty heiress launches Everybody & Everyone to make fashion sustainable
Image courtesy of World Resources Institute
The new brand, which sells females’s clothing for every size from 00 to 24 and at rates ranging from $18 to $288 (most fall in the $50 to $150 variety, offered a quick scroll through the business’s brand-new site) partners with companies like Naadam and Ecoalf for sustainable cashmere and recycled fabrics made from plastic.
As the style business has actually expanded, so has the wealth of the Chou household. South Ocean Knitters, the knitwear manufacturer begun by Chou’s grandpa, was accountable for among the first foreign investments into mainland China in 1974. It is now one of the largest providers of knitwear in the world, and, together with the Hong Kong producer Li & & Fung, lags the Cobalt Fashion Holding conglomerate.
Veronica Chou’s family has made its fortune at the leading edge of the fast fashion company through financial investments in business like Michael Kors and Tommy Hilfiger. Now, the heiress toan approximated $2.1 billion fortune is launching her own business, Everybody & Everyone, to show that the style market can be both successful and environmentally sustainable. There’s no argument about the negative impacts
Everyone & & Everyone has also 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 actually bought and retired offsets to stabilize its emissions, Chou states.
Because that discovery, Chou dove into the world of sustainable production head-first. Through her household’s investment vehicles she has actually dealt with companies like Modern Meadow, which utilizes bio-engineering to make leather items in a lab. Chou has actually likewise led financial investments in Thousand Fell, a soon-to-launch manufacturer of fully recyclable shoes; Dirty Labs, which is developing more sustainable laundry cleaning products; and Carbon Engineering, which is establishing a direct air capture innovation for co2.
well. About 20 %of commercial water pollution globally can be traced to the dyeing and treatment of fabrics– and microplastics from polyester, acrylic and nylon are contaminating the world’s oceans. The increase of fast style has motivated consumers to speed up waste. Approximately one garbage truck loaded with clothing is landfilled all over the world every 2nd, according to a 2017 report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. That suggests customers are discarding around $400 billion worth of valuable items every year as low prices and more “seasons” develop an illusion of disposability.
Some clothing are also made with fabrics that have actually recycled silver in them– so that the clothes can be used numerous times without smelling or the need for a wash.
“For our brand name, recycled is a huge 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 products that can be recycled again.”
It was around the time that Chou had her kids, she states, that she realized the importance of making a brand that was both ecologically sustainable and inclusive.
And her daddy, Silas Chou, made millions as an investor in Michael Kors and Tommy Hilfiger. As an executive at Iconix Brand Group China, Veronica Chou contributed in the acceleration of the industry– bringing American brands to Chinese customers. Chou likewise worked as the co-founder of the Beijing-based private equity fund China Consumer Capital and as a director of Karl Lagerfeld Greater China.
Everyone & & Everyone uses the lessons that Chou has actually discovered sustainability to a new fashion brand name that she hopes can work as a model for how to weave sustainability into every aspect of the industry.
For Chou, an understanding of the ecological toll that the household organisation was taking on the planet started 6 years ago– a few years before Iconix Brand Group obtained the China subsidiary she had co-founded with her father in a deal reportedly worth $56 million.
Digital printing is utilized in location of screens to avoid lots of water waste, the company stated, and numerous of the business’s materials are not dyed at all. rather, the business relies on an upcycling process by separating recycled fibers mechanically by color.
“It was six years ago I started learning about sustainability and five years ago that I stated that I needed to have a sustainable brand,” says Chou.
of the fashion business on the environment. The fabrics industry mostly utilizes non-renewable
resources– on the order of 98 million lots each year. That includes the oil to make synthetic fibers, fertilizers to grow cotton and hazardous chemicals to color, deal with and produce the textiles used to make clothes. The greenhouse gas footprint from fabrics production was approximately 1.2 billion lots of CO2 equivalent in 2015– more than all global flights and maritime shipments integrated(and a great deal of those maritime shipments and international flights were transporting clothes). The litany of catastrophes that can be credited to the clothes market extends to contamination, as
“I began building Everybody & & Everyone from the ground-up, very first by getting the finest team in place then by discovering the right vendors, partners and makers who were already making strides in the sustainability area,” Chou said in a declaration. “I wanted this brand to be for each female, so body sustainability, inclusivity and positivity were going to be the foundation of everything we did. We then constructed the brands sustainable & & technical pillars, which consist of activation, recycled, coloring & & printing, naturals done much better, bio-based fibers and end usage to guarantee our items would minimize negative impacts. We are sustainable to the labels stitched into each garment.”
The company’s attention to its environmental impact likewise encompasses its supply chain. “Most of our fabrics are knit near to where our garments are made. That is certainly lowering our carbon footprint,” states Chou. “I put a focus on having factories in America … our denim is produced in America and in the future we’re looking at athletics and tee shirts to be produced in America.”
Veronica Chou’s family has made household fortune at the forefront of the fast fashion business through investments in companies like Michael Kors and Tommy Hilfiger. And her dad, 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 role in the acceleration of the market– bringing American brands to Chinese customers. Since that revelation, Chou dove into the world of sustainable production head-first.”For our brand, recycled is a big story for us,” says Chou.