Eco-friendly fashion pair use offcuts and old fabrics to create new clothing line
THE husband and wife duo behind the emerging Irish clothing company, Fresh Cuts, have called for stricter rules about how fashion brands can use the ‘sustainable’ label.
Steven and Lorna Murphy say greenwashing is rife in the fashion industry, with many brands using loose definitions of sustainable or carbon neutral ‘as a marketing tactic because that’s what people are looking for’.
Speaking to the Irish Mail on Sunday, Steven said: ‘Brands will say, “this is our sustainable jumper, it’s made from recycled plastic bottles”.
‘But if you actually look into the breakdown of how that product is made, 16% will be recycled polyester, 50% might be just normal cotton and the rest will just be normal polyester.
‘And the reason they’re using polyester isn’t to be sustainable – it’s because it makes it cheaper to make.’
His wife Lorna, who designs their products, continued: ‘Sustainability isn’t just the fabric, it’s how it’s made. Are you using chemicals in the process? Is the factory GOTS [Global Organic Textile Standard] certified? What are they doing with the extra water? What are they doing with the extra fabric?’
Steven pointed out that major ‘fast fashion’ retailers like Pretty Little Thing and H&M have ‘sustainable collections’ and use organic fabrics respectively, but ‘they’re still making them to a sub-par standard’.
‘You buy them really cheap and then you throw them away after a few wears and it goes to a landfill. So it’s about longevity as well.’
The Dubliner, who packed in a career in banking to follow his dream of starting a clothing company in 2015, said being eco-conscious is a ‘box-ticking’ exercise for a lot of companies.
He said: ‘Throw a bit of recycled polyester into it, pay a bit of money to plant a few trees [as many ‘carbon neutral’ companies do] and there you go – that’s everything sorted.’
Lorna, who’s also from Dublin and studied fashion in Milan, said there should be ‘industry standards set by governments’ when it comes to labelling a product as sustainable, ‘rather than leaving it up to the consumer’.
She said: ‘They know this is happening. They need to rein it in before it gets out of control. Consumers think they’re being sustainable, but in fact they’re not.’
The couple have done everything to ensure their own operation is sustainable, ethical and fair to all involved in their products, including the farmers who grow the cotton. They have also formed a ‘great relationship’ with a manufacturer in India, who they met at an ethical trade show in Germany.
Steven said: ‘It’s all GOTS-certified organic cotton, 90% of the water used is reused in the factory, and the extra 10% is used to make building materials. The knitting area of the factory is solar-powered and then our mills where we get our cotton are wind powered.’
He said their company doesn’t ‘preach’ about sustainability and is a fashion brand first, but that no other approach was palatable when starting out.
Their latest range is made from ‘dead stock’ – unused fabric from previous seasons. The process involved Lorna designing according to what was available, leading to creations like a jumper with two different colour sleeves.
The couple, who have a one-and-a-half year-old daughter, said their working relationship has evolved organically too since meeting on a night out five years ago.
‘There was a synergy because I had the design and Steven had the business aptitude,’ Lorna said.
‘He helped me [with her scarf business L.E.A.F.] and I helped him and before we knew it I was full-time in the business and we were working together.’
‘Governments need to set industry standards’