With its collections Unravelau wants to create awareness of the environmental issues we caused ourselves in order to encourage change. The collections are a direct solution for the customer. Therefore, careful material research has to be done and zero-waste patterns have to be used.


AWARENESS
Fashion plays an important role in expressing who Unravelau are. Yet, Unravelau also see the big impact of the fashion industry on our society and the environment. Sustainable fashion ensures that we are still able to express ourselves, but also thinking of the limits that our planet has. This means that sustainable fashion has to be more than just a hype or philanthropy. The industry has to change, from raw materials to the way of disposal and everything in between. Such a change does not happen overnight, it takes time. Unravelau try to make every decision as sustainable as possible, one step at a time but at least one step further than the day before.


LOCAL PRODUCTION
Unravelau produces all their work in a fair way. Every product is made by hand in the atelier in Utrecht, The Netherlands. The products are made with love and care for fashion and the environment and are expected to be treated the same. To reduce their ecological footprint in the atelier, Unravelau separate all their trash and almost all the furniture is second hand.


ENVIRONMENT
Unravelau want to be as ecofriendly as possible. That’s why many of the used patterns are reused, also to save materials during the earliest stages of the design process. Thread leftovers and waste from fabrics are collected and saved for future use in new collections. Did you know for instance that the tags and stickers on the garments are made of recycled paper and printed with environment friendly ink? By making small sustainable steps Unravelau want to reach a business that is as ecofriendly as possible. All of the materials that are used to send their products to customers are reused. For instance, the boxes, that Unravelau use to send the products in, come from other clothing companies that don't need the boxes anymore. The prints that Unravelau use on their garments are hand printed at a local company at Utrecht, called 'Katoen Fabriek'. The ink that they use is environmentally friendly and is more durable than other printing techniques since they can be washed and ironed.


ZERO-WASTE
The biggest challenge is the step from sketch to pattern. A pattern is a blueprint for a garment. In traditional fashion it is possible to produce an exact copy of a sketch in a 3D outfit. Because sustainable fashion has limits you have to find other ways to achieve the same result with usually less sources. For example: making a fitted jacket from a zerowaste pattern can be very hard because you have to use the entire fabric and cannot throw anything away. Because you want the jacket to be sold you have to consider different sizes in zero-waste patterns. Therefore, when you start with the first prototype jacket it already has to have the possibility to be reshaped into different sizes with the same amount of fabric.