It's never been so important to understand where your clothes come from, how they are made and what kind of company you choose to buy from.
At Antonia York, it is our goal to make clothing that you keep coming back to. Items so beautiful, versatile and well constructed that you reach for them over and over again.
"It doesn’t matter that your dress is made from organic cotton if you wear it once and throw it away."
The most sustainable clothes are the ones you really wear - and so our first principle is to create high-quality garments that look great and can be worn in many different situations dressed up or down.
"We want to restore the appreciation of the garments we otherwise take for granted in society."
Our second principle is to continually improve our supply chain towards more sustainable fabrics and socially responsible sources and to be as transparent about it as possible. In some cases this is easy, such as when we buy deadstock fabrics to make small batches of Limited Edition products here in the UK. Other times, such as when we have garments manufactured at one of our overseas mills, traceability becomes more challenging.
When we use deadstock fabric we don’t have to be so concerned with its origins because it’s a waste product created by another fashion brand. If we don’t use it and no one else buys it then it would simply go to landfill. We can take this deadstock fabric and create beautiful products of our own here in the UK. In this case, where we create garments out of deadstock in the UK, we can be confident that our environmental and social impact is as small as possible.
In the cases where we have fabric printed for us, a lot more work is involved to understand the overall social and environmental impact.
We have to consider the raw materials that went into its production. In the case of cotton or silk this may come down to the farming methods involved in its production and in the case of synthetic fabrics we need to know whether the inputs are recycled or from a virgin source.
This is where Antonia York is today, interrogating our supply chains to better understand the sources of the fabrics we have printed especially for us. The work of sustainability is never complete but we are proud of the progress we have made and continue to make.