At the source: The sweater that is changing how we think about manufacturing

The Zady Essential Collection will be released one piece at a time, starting with a sweater, the essential building block of a winter wardrobe. The sweater, minimalist and refined, is designed to be a mainstay in women’s wardrobes for years to come, instead of a fast fashion fad. On the site, Zady shows every step of the process from sheep ranch to dye house, to demonstrate that products are ethically and sustainably made, with as little environmental impact as possible.

The brand has also launched a We the People petition demanding that the US government requires every clothing label to have a Sourced In and a Made In tag. ‘When we launched Zady, we wanted it to be a fully transparent brand that helped people to understand the origins of the things that they buy,’ Zady co-founder Soraya Darabi tells LS:N Global. ‘The Made In label isn’t enough. It is about offering transparency of supply chain, and while supply chain is a convoluted term, to us it is about understanding where every step of production takes place, and being honest and truthful about that, even on the garment itself.’

For more about brands lifting the veil of secrecy behind manufacturing, read our Whole-chain Thinking microtrend. For more on Zady, see our video interview with co-founder Maxine Bédat at World Retail Congress 2014 in Paris.