Billionaire clothing dynasty heiress launches Everybody & Everyone to make fashion sustainable
As the fashion industry has actually broadened, so has the wealth of the Chou household. South Ocean Knitters, the knitwear maker begun 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 largest providers of knitwear in the world, and, together with the Hong Kong manufacturer Li & & Fung, is behind the Cobalt Fashion Holding conglomerate.
Veronica Chou’s family has actually made its fortune at the forefront of the quick fashion industry through financial investments in companies like Michael Kors and Tommy Hilfiger. And now, the heiress toan approximated $2.1 billion fortune is launching her own business, Everybody & Everyone, to show that the style industry can be both lucrative and ecologically sustainable. There’s no argument about the unfavorable impacts
The company’s attention to its ecological impact also reaches its supply chain. “Most of our fabrics are knit near to where our garments are produced. That is certainly minimizing our carbon footprint,” says Chou. “I put an emphasis on having factories in America … our denim is made in America and in the future we’re looking at athletics and t-shirts to be made in America.”
of the style industry on the environment. The textiles market mainly 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 toxic chemicals to color, deal with and produce the textiles utilized to make clothes. The greenhouse gas footprint from textiles production was approximately 1.2 billion tons of CO2 equivalent in 2015– more than all international flights and maritime shipments integrated(and a great deal of those global flights and maritime shipments were transporting clothes). The list of disasters that can be associated to the clothing industry extends to contamination, as
Some clothing are likewise made with fabrics that have actually recycled silver in them– so that the clothing can be worn several times without smelling or the requirement for a wash.
Image courtesy of World Resources Institute
Everyone & & Everyone has likewise partnered with the company 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.
It was around the time that Chou had her kids, she says, that she recognized the value of making a brand name that was both inclusive and ecologically sustainable.
And her daddy, Silas Chou, made millions as a financier in Michael Kors and Tommy Hilfiger. As an executive at Iconix Brand Group China, Veronica Chou contributed in the acceleration of the market– bringing American brands to Chinese customers. Chou likewise served as the co-founder of the Beijing-based private equity fund China Consumer Capital and as a director of Karl Lagerfeld Greater China.
For Chou, an understanding of the ecological toll that the household organisation was handling the world began six years ago– a few years before Iconix Brand Group acquired the China subsidiary she had actually co-founded with her dad in a transaction apparently worth $56 million.
Because that discovery, Chou dove into the world of sustainable production head-first. Through her household’s financial investment lorries she has actually dealt with companies like Modern Meadow, which uses bio-engineering to make leather products in a lab. Chou has likewise led investments in Thousand Fell, a soon-to-launch manufacturer of fully recyclable shoes; Dirty Labs, which is establishing more sustainable laundry cleaning products; and Carbon Engineering, which is developing a direct air capture innovation for co2.
well. About 20 %of commercial water contamination worldwide can be traced to the dyeing and treatment of textiles– and microplastics from polyester, acrylic and nylon are polluting the world’s oceans. The increase of fast fashion has encouraged consumers to speed up waste. Roughly one garbage truck loaded with clothes is landfilled around the globe every second, according to a 2017 report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. That means consumers are discarding around $400 billion worth of valuable items every year as low prices and more “seasons” create an impression of disposability.
Everybody & & Everyone applies the lessons that Chou has actually discovered about sustainability to a new style brand name that she hopes can work as a model for how to weave sustainability into every facet of the industry.
The brand-new brand, which sells females’s clothing for each size from 00 to 24 and at prices ranging from $18 to $288 (most fall in the $50 to $150 range, given a quick scroll through the business’s brand-new website) partners with business like Naadam and Ecoalf for sustainable cashmere and recycled fabrics made from plastic.
“For our brand, recycled is a big story for us,” states Chou. “Our t-shirts, our socks, our product packaging, our mailers, our labels, our stickers are all made from recycled materials that can be recycled once again.”
“It was 6 years ago I started finding out about sustainability and five years ago that I said that I required to have a sustainable brand name,” states Chou.
Digital printing is used in place of screens to avoid lots of water waste, the business stated, and several of the business’s fabrics are not colored at all. rather, the business depends on an upcycling process by separating recycled fibers mechanically by color.
“I started constructing Everybody & & Everyone from the ground-up, very first by getting the finest team in location then by finding the ideal vendors, manufacturers and partners who were already making strides in the sustainability area,” Chou said in a statement. “I wanted this brand to be for every single female, so body sustainability, inclusivity and positivity were going to be the backbone of whatever we did. We then constructed the brands sustainable & & technical pillars, which consist of activation, recycled, coloring & & printing, naturals done better, bio-based fibers and end use to ensure our items would decrease negative effects. We are sustainable to the labels stitched into each garment.”
Veronica Chou’s family has made household fortune at the forefront of the leading edge fashion business through investments in companies financial investments 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 acceleration of the market– bringing American brand names to Chinese customers. Since that revelation, Chou dove into the world of sustainable production head-first.”For our brand name, recycled is a big story for us,” says Chou.