“For our brand, recycled is a huge story for us,” says Chou. “Our tee shirts, our socks, our packaging, our mailers, our labels, our sticker labels are all made from recycled materials that can be recycled once again.”
Some clothes are also made with fabrics that have recycled silver in them– so that the clothing can be worn multiple times without smelling or the need for a wash.
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 contributed in the acceleration of the market– bringing American brands to Chinese consumers. 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.
Digital printing is utilized in location of screens to avoid lots of water waste, the business stated, and several of the company’s materials are not dyed at all. instead, the company depends on an upcycling process by separating recycled fibers mechanically by color.
of the fashion business on the environment. The fabrics industry primarily utilizes non-renewable
resources– on the order of 98 million heaps each year. That consists of the oil to make artificial fibers, fertilizers to grow cotton and poisonous chemicals to dye, deal with and produce the textiles utilized to make clothes. The greenhouse gas footprint from textiles production was approximately 1.2 billion lots of CO2 equivalent in 2015– more than all global flights and maritime shipments combined(and a great deal of those global flights and maritime shipments were hauling clothes). The list of disasters that can be attributed to the clothes industry extends to contamination, as
It was around the time that Chou had her kids, she says, that she recognized the significance of making a brand that was both inclusive and environmentally sustainable.
“I started building Everybody & & Everyone from the ground-up, first by getting the very best group in location then by discovering the best vendors, partners and manufacturers who were currently making strides in the sustainability space,” Chou stated in a declaration. “I wanted this brand to be for every single woman, so body inclusivity, positivity and sustainability were going to be the foundation of whatever we did. We then built the brands sustainable & & technical pillars, which include activation, recycled, coloring & & printing, naturals done much better, bio-based fibers and end usage to ensure our products would reduce unfavorable impacts. We are sustainable to the labels sewn into each garment.”
Since that revelation, Chou dove into the world of sustainable manufacturing head-first. Through her family’s financial investment lorries she has dealt with business like Modern Meadow, which uses bio-engineering to make leather goods in a lab. Chou has likewise led investments in Thousand Fell, a soon-to-launch producer of totally recyclable shoes; Dirty Labs, which is establishing more sustainable laundry cleaning products; and Carbon Engineering, which is establishing a direct air capture technology for carbon dioxide.
For Chou, an understanding of the environmental toll that the household organisation was taking on the planet started 6 years back– a couple of years prior to Iconix Brand Group acquired the China subsidiary she had co-founded with her father in a transaction apparently worth $56 million.
Everyone & & Everyone has actually also 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 computed its carbon footprint from all of its pre-launch activities and has bought and retired offsets to stabilize its emissions, Chou says.
“It was six years ago I started discovering sustainability and five years ago that I stated that I needed to have a sustainable brand name,” states Chou.
well. About 20 %of commercial water contamination globally can be traced to the dyeing and treatment of fabrics– and microplastics from polyester, acrylic and nylon are polluting the world’s oceans. The rise of fast style has actually motivated consumers to speed up waste. Roughly one trash truck complete of clothing is landfilled worldwide every 2nd, according to a 2017 report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. That suggests consumers are discarding around $400 billion worth of important products every year as low prices and more “seasons” develop an impression of disposability.
As the fashion organisation has expanded, so has the wealth of the Chou household. South Ocean Knitters, the knitwear producer started by Chou’s grandfather, was accountable for one of the first foreign financial investments into mainland China in 1974. It is now among the biggest providers of knitwear on the planet, and, together with the Hong Kong manufacturer Li & & Fung, lags the Cobalt Fashion Holding conglomerate.
Veronica Chou’s family has made its fortune at the forefront of the fast style business through financial 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 show that the fashion business can be both lucrative and ecologically sustainable. There’s no argument about the unfavorable effects
The business’s attention to its environmental effect likewise encompasses its supply chain. “Most of our fabrics are knit near where our garments are made. That is absolutely decreasing our carbon footprint,” says Chou. “I put a focus on having factories in America … our jeans is manufactured in America and in the future we’re taking a look at sports and tee shirts to be manufactured in America.”
The new brand, which offers women’s clothing for each size from 00 to 24 and at costs varying from $18 to $288 (most fall in the $50 to $150 range, given a quick scroll through the company’s new site) partners with companies like Naadam and Ecoalf for sustainable cashmere and recycled fabrics made from plastic.
Everyone & & Everyone uses the lessons that Chou has actually found out about sustainability to a new fashion brand name that she hopes can serve as a model for how to weave sustainability into every aspect of the industry.
Image thanks to World Resources Institute