Sustainability
There's something really wrong with the fashion industry:
- it is the second largest polluter in the world
- it relies on the exploitation of workers, forced to live in inhumans conditions.
More about this on sustainyourstyle.org: What's wrong with the fashion industry?
We don't want to be a part of it.
We want to sell clothes that are not manufactured by children.
We want to sell clothes that are not manufactured by slave workers.
We want to sell clothes that are created with care for the environment.
Brands we work with
While all the designs are home-made at Alcove, we rely on other companies to provide the clothes, and print our creations on them. We selected these partners according to the quality of their products, as well as their values.
Printful
Printful is the company we selected for the fulfillment. Whenever you order with us, Printful print our patterns in the selected garment, and ship it to you.
We compared quite a few providers, and Printful offered the best print quality for our designs.
Printful performs its Direct-To-Garment printing using eco-friendly water-based inks.
Website: www.printful.com
Alternative Apparel
Alternative Apparel is a brand creating quality clothes, while having strong ethical values. Alternative Apparel is rated four stars on "Good On You", an app evaluating brands on labor rights, animal and environment protection.
Website: www.alternativeapparel.com
Bella+Canvas
We really like the premium feel of Bella+Canvas garments, and the company has strong values about sustainability: Bella+Canvas is WRAP certified at the platinum level (cf. www.wrapcompliance.org)
Website: www.bellacanvas.com/
You?
We're open to collaborations, especially with ethical/sustainable producers willing to feature our designs. Send us a message if you think there might be a match between us :)
No ads
We made some tough decisions for our business, be we think it is important to stick to these principles.
Because we care about people's quality of life.
Ads is pollution
Some ads are great. Creative, beautiful, surprising, inspiring, wholesome.
Most of the ads are annoyance, though:
- Ads popup in front of our eyes when we don't need to see them
- Ads degrade the beauty of our surroundings
- Ads are irrelevant, and promote things we don't care about
- Ads push us to consume more than we need
Alcove does not use traditional and social media advertising.
We may sponsor events and content, or decorate places, though. This seems acceptable to us.
We count on word of mouth to get known. This will push us to do better, more remarkable work.
Facebook? No thanks!
Facebook... A consequent part of the Internet, nowadays.
While some good things do happen on facebook, many people feel like they spend too much time on there, while not getting much out of it.
We want you to be active, creative, healthy.
Hence, we won't encourage you to spend more time there. You can find us on other social media, welcome.
Slow fashion
Off the mainstream trends
We do not follow trends.
Why is this? simply because it does not make sense. Something beautiful today was already beautiful last year, and will still be next year.
Of course, variation is important, as well as innovation. We're all in for this.
We are also influenced by what's created around us now, needless to say. But no, we do not define our style based on what's trendy now.
Our own pace
Inspiration comes and goes.
We follow this flow to release our designs, rather than a rigid calendar schedule.