ABOUT
Born to give women the power to design their own wardrobe, Lily & Lou encompasses slow fashion and stylish designs that you’ll keep coming back to for years to come. They produce garments from quality eco-friendly fabrics, with timeless silhouettes. Their goal is to highlight environmental issues to their customers and empower them to care for the planet in style.
IMPACT
People
The brand works with local home-based seamstresses and small scale manufacturers to produce garments. Lily & Lou prefers to support small business owners because they take pride in their work and are more conscious of business ethics and good practices.
Product
Lily & Lou’s products are proudly designed and made in Singapore. They make sure to use (ready-stock) sustainable materials as well as deadstock fabrics. The brand sources their materials in Asia, specifically Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong and China. Often, factories have leftover or “defective” (e.g. shade of dye is incorrect) fabrics that they produce for large fast fashion companies. So, the brand liaises with these factories to purchase these unwanted materials that would otherwise end up in a landfill. Lily & Lou also specializes in customizable clothing. The brand digitizes many aspects of their workflow, such as creating the patterns for their designs using CAD software, and “produces” their samples on a 3D rendering software. They go through multiple rounds of edits on the computer and produce only 1 final sample for production while traditional production methods will result in a greater number of samples. They also use their offcut fabrics to make accessories such as tote bags and face masks.
Packaging
The brand uses delivery boxes made from recycled paper to package their products. Plastic packaging is still used in the factories. However, they retain as much of the plastic packaging as possible and return them to the factories for reuse.
Planet
In terms of their materials, the brand only uses what is available around, so they don’t need to produce anything extra. Since they have digitized many aspects of their production and design stages, they are able to reduce textile and other types of waste. Lily & Lou can also calculate as well as optimize fabric usage using software to create/preview markers (for fabric cutting).
Principles
As a result of consumerism, many women (including co-founder Yan) end up with a full wardrobe with nothing to wear. Lily & Lou wants their customers to buy clothes that they truly want, that are personalized to their preferences. The brand wants their clothes to last long. In-season styles may not last forever. However, clothing customized to one’s liking will always have a special place in your wardrobe.
