ELIZABETH BRIEDIS

CO-FOUNDER AND CHIEF BRAND OFFICER AT SPELL & THE GYPSY COLLECTIVE

During Fashion Revolution Week in 2016, a customer emailed me to ask who made her clothes.

We’d always been so proud of the partnerships with our factories around the world, so I was able to tell her all about who made our clothes and how we scrutinised the ethical conditions of our garment factories, but I realised in that moment “my word” wasn’t enough. We researched and discovered WRAP, SEDEX, BSCI and other third-party ethical accreditations that work closely with our factories. You can’t consider the social impact of your manufacturing without considering the environmental impacts as well. What started as a very helpful question from a customer has snowballed into a huge journey toward sustainability for us.

One of the first steps to reducing your footprint is knowing your impact.

We’re measuring things like fabric consumption, wastage, the percentage of sustainable fibres used in our collections, carbon dioxide emissions, water use, the footprint of air freight versus sea freight from our suppliers. We sent our first impact report to our customers and the positive feedback was astounding. Now we’ve started tracking our impact we’re able to start measuring improvements and each department is committed to constant refinement.

As a consumer it’s about constantly drawing new lines in the sand around what is and isn’t acceptable.

First it was saying no to single-use plastics and disposable coffee cups, then it was making sure we switched energy providers to local green energy. I’ve found my personal sustainability journey is particularly enjoyable when you “make the beast beautiful”, so to speak. I keep gorgeous reusable brass straws in a small leather case, my reusable coffee cup is a beautifully glazed ceramic and my cloth shopping bags are made in upcycled Spell fabrics. We shop locally for produce at farmers’ markets. It all sparks such joy!

When we started our business in 2009, the concept of sustainability was slowly gaining momentum but still pretty niche.

In the past few years we’ve felt a real positive shift. Many Australian brands (us included) lacked understanding of how to begin their sustainability journey, but as more brands are taking bigger, bolder steps the movement is growing. We are committed to being open with other companies about how we’ve driven change, too – once we all have the tools, we can all do better.