BRAND SPOTLIGHT: GIRLFRIEND COLLECTIVE
Believing good things come to those who don’t waste. Girlfriend Collective are leading the way for eco-friendly, sustainable and ethically made activewear, using old water bottles and fishing nets, cleaning up our planet and producing high quality garments that look good and feel great. Here’s how..
Behind Girlfriend Collective are husband and wife team, Quang and Ellie Dinh, from Seattle, Washington. Their origin story is pretty simple, back in 2016 Ellie was searching for leggings that were ethically made, only to find there was nothing on the market that fit that category. This initial search has led the couple on an incredible journey to founding their very own sustainable eco-friendly activewear brand.
They built their business, first and foremost, around clear, unnegotiable standards - to use ethical manufacturing and recycled materials. Being eco-friendly is at the top of their priorities, along with being transparent and taking care of the people who make your clothes. They have carefully chosen partners who share their values and always put what’s best for the planet above their own business needs. Even their packaging is 100% recycled and recyclable.
Over the years they have come to work with communities across Asia who are coming together, recycling old water bottles and fishing nets that would otherwise clog landfills and pollute oceans, producing the best quality activewear they can. From beginning to end the process undertaken is unlike any other activewear brand in the industry.
Their primary recycling partner in Taiwan specialises in eco-friendly and high-quality textiles, whilst their core sewing partner in Vietnam guarantees fair wages, protects its workers and ensures safe and healthy working conditions.
Did you know that almost all synthetic activewear is made from plastic? Surprising, but it is. The big difference with Girlfriend Collective is that they have diverted tonnes of waste from polluting our oceans and land to make theirs. What an amazing feat that is in itself.
The recycling process in Taiwan has not only helped to clean up the country’s waste it was struggling with, but it has brought people together as they all gather as a community to sort their waste into containers of recyclables, food waste and garbage. And rather than leave once the sorting process is done, these communities stay and talk until the trucks arrive to pick it up, turning what could be a tedious individual task into a collective and connective one. One of the many lovely bi-products of this business venture.
So how exactly do old water bottles turn into a pair of leggings? The very start of the process begins with collecting all types of bottles which are then sorted into categories and colours. The bottles the brand uses are the clear #1 PET type, so once these are separated from the others (which go on their own recycling journey), they are washed and shred down into tiny chips, then washed again and the raw PET chips are shipped to a manufacturing facility.
From here they are taken to the spinning mill where they go through another wash and are dried. They’re then sent to a machine where they are heated up and extruded into long thick spaghetti-like strands, which are then chipped down once again into little pellets. These pellets then get reheated and are extruded again to make superfine threads that are spun together into a single thread and put on to large bobbins, which are packaged and sent to the knitting factory.
The knitting process is unlike any other in the industry. Girlfriend Collective have worked towards making all their clothes both softer and more stable than your standard single-jersey - a process which requires time and precision. Each knitting machine only produces about 100 pairs-worth of fabric in a 24-hour period, producing the highest quality products they can achieve.
From here the fabric is dyed using eco-friendly dyes, with the water-waste carefully cleaned and cooled before it is released. They even donate the dye mud to a local pavement facility where it’s recycled into pavements and roads.
Next comes the most human intensive part of making the clothing - the cutting and sewing, requiring 14 pairs of hands and eyes to make each pair of leggings. The brand ensures the workers in their factories are looked after, it’s one of their core principles. They are all paid fair wages, provided with both free catered food along with guided exercise breaks, and given free health checkups every 6 months, as well as health insurance.
At the end of this amazing process are clothes that when you put them on, they make you feel great. And knowing the process they have gone through will no doubt bring even more joy to those who wear them. It’s so refreshing to have a brand we can really get behind and believe in. They are doing so much good for our planet and its people. Whilst there are some brands recycling brand new plastic bottles in order to claim they are using recycled materials (yes this does happen!), Girlfriend Collective are actually going the distance and doing things the right way. Their ethos is that the more you look at where things come from, the more you can be invested in where they go. We couldn’t agree more. Thank you for all that you are doing, amazing Girlfriend Collective.
