HOW SUSTAINABLE ARE WE REALLY?

Aug 15th, 2024

The choice in bringing out a fashion brand with a sturdy sustainable footprint is a challenging mission. Sustainability has had a rise in the last 20 years. The main reason for this being mass consumption in response to mass production, or is it the other way around?

That is where the difficulty starts. How real is true sustainability and how possible is it to be 100% sustainable? The truth is, it is not. As a brand, you need to make a choice and choose a path.

Sustainability is a journey rather than a destination. It requires continuous effort and a commitment. While we may not achieve absolute sustainability overnight, our choices reflect a dedication to local production and sales and responsible sourcing.

For us as a brand at Sutura, we wanted to think of sustainability in a the meaning of itself: long lasting and build a compartmentalized sustainability plan. A plan that does not embrace sustainability in its vagueness by choosing linen & cotton fabrics alone.

We wanted something that really embraces sustainability in the old fashion way: long lasting clothing, made by locals and sold locally by creating a brand that creates a footprint not only by design, but also by staying around as a brand the coming years.

In the Western world we all live in this dual mindset where we love to have everything in reach but also have a nostalgic craving to the times where every person had their own business and sold to their local neighborhood and made a living.

Unfortunately that nostalgic but once a true reality is not within our reach as a collective at this moment in time and due to growth of population looks like it will not come back anytime soon.

However, we can make our mark by reaching out to the people who are willing and have the means to buy items like these.

What did we try to focus on as a brand?

LOCATION

We believe local production and local sales are the key. By making the supply chain as short as possible we focused first on where we wanted to sell and produce. By having a history in Bali and it being a fountain of creativity, as a brand we deeply believed we could reach as many people as possible here due to its big reach of international community and travelers.

THE MATERIALS

The materials we wanted to work with. Loose from trends, we chose naturally sourced materials as Linen, Cotton, Hemp, Wool. Even though Linen is one of the most popular materials across the globe today, we choose Linen as our main staple as continuity in our items.

Why?

Linen is the oldest used fiber for making clothing. Linen can be up to three times stronger than cotton.This is because the cellulose fibers in linen yarn are slightly longer and wrapped tighter than those found in cotton yarn. This gives it great durability and allows linen products to be long-lasting.

It requires very little water and the flax plant can sustain in colder climates and can even be cultivated in soil that's not fertile enough to grow produce. Flax is also naturally resistant too many pests and you rarely have to use pesticides or weed killers.

So we chose to work with pure linens, linen blends (cotton - hemp - elastane (no more then 5%)). Our fabrics are sourced from Indonesian suppliers. Some of them source from local factories who produce linen, others from imported fabrics (these choices can be justified that pure linen with long lasting properties are mainly produced in Northern Europe, like Belgium, France, ... ) We chose to work with what was already in Indonesia.

LOCAL TAILORS

We chose to work with tailors who are located in Bali. Making sure that the items are made close to where the main sale of the items will take place (our flag ship store in Padang Padang, Bali and other sales points, located in Bali). We offer online shopping but our main focus are the physical shops.

This also ensures that there is no mass production taking place as the local tailors do not have a minimal MOQ and we can ask for an item to be made 1 time or 5 times, depending on the demand or based on our sales forecast. This takes away excess production, excess transportation, excess in fabrics.

None of our tailors work in a factory but work in their own workshops either at home or not far from their homes. They are paid by item, not by a salary and work in their own chosen time. They make their own prices based on the difficulty of the item. To give an idea: most items cost between 20 to 60 USD to make, excluding the materials and all other costs.

LOCAL FLAGSHIPSTORE

Our main sales strategy was chosen to go back in time and defy the idea that physical shops are ` dead `. In Bali, shopping in physical shops is very much alive and we believe that fitting an item and feeling the fabric is still the way to step into a brand story and give our clients the opportunity to make a confident decision in their investment.

Our shop design is simple. The idea of a `poor `mens home was the inspiration for our design. The man or woman who owns a chair and a bed, uses a basket to make a lamp, a handle to make a hanger and has only a few furniture pieces available. The man (or woman) who cherishes having little but of good quality and something that will last a lifetime. Not excess in things but minimal possession, made from naturally sourced materials.

So to come back to our first question: how sustainable are we really?

We are sustainable in the sense of the meaning of the word: durable. Sustainable is an adjective for something that is able to be sustained, i.e, something that is “bearable” and “capable of being continued at a certain level”. In the end, sustainability can perhaps be seen as the process(es) by which something is kept at a certain level.

Keeping that certain level in mind, we want to be transparant to our audience by clarifying these questions:

Do you only use organic materials? No, we do not. As the process of organic materials and getting them to the location that we are, is not always a sustainable choice. Indonesia is not a land that has acres and acres of land available to grow crops. It exists out of islands and can only produce a smaller amount compared to places like the US and Australia. Getting certified materials under into the country is a harder mission that to most other continents. Indonesia wants to protect their economy and does everything to provide their people with jobs. For this reason we avoid imported materials as much as possible and focus what is already available in the country without importing any materials ourselves.

Find out more about Indonesians import/export and production of linen here:

https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/flax-woven-fabric/reporter/idn

Do we have only cruelty free materials? No, we do not. We believe in sustainability in the form of durability. Using leather, linen, cotton, wool are not always cruelty free choices but they are however the ones who promise a long lasting lifetime of the item. We wanted to focus on being LOCAL and create items that live long. That was our mission.

Why do you do online sales with shipping if your focus is to be `local`? We want to bring awareness worldwide about this short supply chain we try to achieve. We make our costumers pay for the shipping and offer a one week waiting time for their delivery.

As you can see we have not nailed the complete sustainability cycle in the most ideal sense. However, we hope to achieve a local Sutura supply chain in several places in the world if our efforts are appreciated and want to improve wherever we can by learning from our suppliers, tailors, clients and anyone else who can contribute to our journey.

We hope to take you along on this journey of going back in time where quality items where the norm, not a luxury and where owning little creates a peace of mind.

Sutura Studio, Bali