Sustainability

Designed With Sustainability In Mind

The design of your swimwear also contributes to sustainability. What I keep in mind:

Making designs multi-use, reversible and mix and match – our reversible pieces are designed to be worn for both swimming and exercise so you can get more looks and mileage out of your swimwear, ensuring you can wear each piece as many times as possible.

The kids collections use premium fabrics and have unisex prints and styles where possible so they’ll last a long time and can be handed down from brother to sister to friend.

Swimwear fabric contains spandex, which is what makes it stretchy. The spandex in select women’s pieces is Lycra® Xtralife™, a patented technology that helps fabric retain its shape so it can last as long as possible. If you take care of our swimsuit well, it can last you for 5 years or more!

Swimwear: The Problem Child Of Sustainable Fashion

Fashion is one of the most polluting industries out there, with landfills quickly filling with discarded poor-quality cheap clothes that are now seen as disposable items. The mantra of sustainable fashion usually follows: wear natural fibres, buy basics you can match with many items in your closet, ensure products are produced ethically and extend the life of clothing by buying second hand or swapping.

However, swimwear poses a few unique challenges. Because of hygiene considerations, it cannot be easily donated or sold as second hand. Once it’s used, right now, the only way to get rid of a swimsuit is to dispose of it.

Who Made Your Clothes?

On 24 April 2013, the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh collapsed.

There were five garment factories there all making clothes for big global brands. Over 1,000 people died and another 2,500 were injured, making it the fourth largest industrial disaster in history. When you think of fast fashion, a large proportion of of brands produce in facilities such as these, paying workers only $95 per month (or even less, as this is the legal minimum wage in Bangladesh) for long hours of work in unsafe conditions.

Who Made Your Clothes?

As an independent brand, we are making steps to improve supply chain transparency. Our most recent collections have been made at a small family-run specialized swimwear factory just outside Guangzhou, China.

Workers are paid hourly rather than per piece (the usual practice) so they ensure the best quality and can work at their own pace earning a living wage.

Be Good To The Earth, We’ve Only Got One

What we can do is use recycled fabrics to make your swimming costumes, and also ensure it can be worn as long as possible so you can replace five cheap bathing suits with 1-2 good ones. The raw material for our swimwear is waste plastic, such as single-use water bottles and ECONYL® regenerated nylon fibres derived from carpeting and ghost fishing nets. These are fishing nets left behind in the oceans by fishing boats, either intentionally or accidentally. Experts have estimated that there are roughly 640,000 tonnes of these nets currently in our ocean, accounting for 10% of the total ocean plastic. This is dangerous as marine life can get caught in or ingest these nets. They also collect other nylon waste such as carpet fluff left over from the manufacturing process and used nylon carpeting and upholstery.

The waste materials are collected from recycling plants, landfills, manufacturing facilities and the ocean and then purified and regenerated into nylon and polyester. My fabric supplier uses this to make yarns that are then woven into fabric, which is as good as new fabric (which it essentially is!)

Also by using digital printing for all of my custom prints, we reduce the amount of ink and dye used in the process and reduce the amount of fabric wasted overall.