Madre Natura, Italian for “mother nature,” is a new Sydney, Australia-based fashion brand that puts the environment first.
Designer and founder Jackie Galleghan, a graduate of the Fashion Design Studio at TAFE NSW in Ultimo, had spent over a decade working with a mix of both upscale and fast fashion brands in Sydney where she had witnessed first hand how much leftover deadstock fabric gets tossed in the trash or is left lying around fashion studios.
Seeing this, Galleghan knew she wanted her future fashion label to upcycle these leftover pieces of fabric in a chic and innovative way – and that’s exactly what she’s done.
Madre Natura is one of the few fashion labels out there that relies almost solely on deadstock fabric to create their collections. In fact, 99% of Madre Natura’s inaugural collection was created out of dead stock. The other 1% of fabric was sourced from organic cotton.
The Australian fashion label also ensures that all garment trims are made from either biodegradable fibres or non-virgin fibres, such as recycled (PET) plastic water bottles. For example, all thread used is made from 100% organic cotton or 100% Tencel thread. Meanwhile, the buttons are actually made of fruit seeds that were processed into the shape of a button. Madre Natura claims that materials commonly used for garment trims, such as polyester threads or conventional buttons, will eventually break down in a landfill but they’ll take over 200 years to do so.
In addition, all Madre Natura pieces are designed and manufactured locally in Sydney, Australia, and all of their collections rely on limited and small batch runs of productions, as well as pre-orders.
Further, Madre Natura takes the term “circular” seriously. Their vision is to create a fully circular fashion house, and they are already well on their way there. First off, all Madre Natura pieces were designed to be gender-neutral and seasonless, so that they can be worn year-round for many years.
Second, the brand offers each customer three complimentary mends to ensure the item fits them perfectly and to extend the life of the garment. These three mends are custom pant hemming, button repair or replacement, and zipper repair or replacement.
Should a customer decide they are done with a particular garment, Madre Natura encourages customers to send it back to them so that it can be upcycled and used in a future collection. They will even send the customer a free postage slip and a complimentary gift in return.
Lastly, Madre Natura’s packaging and tags are also part of their circular vision, which is why all swing tags, strings, boxes, tissue paper, packing tape, and printing slips are made from recycled paper using eco-friendly ink.
The brand’s debut collection consists of a muted colour palette of white, tan, and brown and features classic everyday pieces, ranging from a flounce sleeve maxi dress to ‘70s inspired wide-legged trousers.
All images in this article are courtesy of Madre Natura.
