Transparency

At Ukiyo Boutique, we aim to be fully sustainable. While we haven’t quite achieved this, we promise we are working towards being fully sustainable because we love our planet; it’s the only one we’ve got.

We are a big believer in the slow fashion movement. Ukiyo dresses are made to last. The reason we started making our own dresses and subsequently started the label was because we found it difficult to buy dresses made with high quality fabric that could be worn for years. All designs are made in small batches or made to order to ensure that we’re not oversupplying. Fast fashion has created a huge problem of oversupply, over-utilised resources and exploitation of cheap labour, as well as fuelling consumer expectations of “never pay full price”. This phenomenon has sadly changed the way consumers value the fashion industry. We want to change this.

One way of doing this is by only sourcing high quality fabrics. Our main love is European Flax Linen. Linen is a natural fibre, derived from the flax plant. The quality of linen is unmatched by synthetic or manmade fabrics and our pieces will last through many hot summers and cold winters. We also use organic cotton and hemp blends, which are natural fibres designed to be strong and long-lasting but with a slightly lighter feel. Hemp is one of the most sustainable fibres on Earth; being a weed, it grows prolifically with little water, little pesticides and no fertiliser. Virtually every component of the plant is used in the growing process, leaving no waste. Hemp plants even give back to the Earth by returning nutrients to the soil.

Our cotton/hemp fabric is naturally dyed using avocado seeds or Indigo dye. Ukiyo collaborates with a Brisbane local Indigo dyer, Sascha of @indigocloth. The natural dying process does use water; but being a natural process with no chemicals involved, it can be safely reused on the garden. Maybe one day we will have blue plants (just kidding, but they do love the extra water)! The flax linen is dyed in Lithuania and is Oeko Tex 100 Certified, meaning the fabric is completely free from chemicals that could be harmful to humans.

Lithuanian linen production is almost organic, without even trying. Little pesticides and fertilisers are used in production and due to the local climate, minimal extra water is required.

Furthermore, our swimwear line is super duper sustainable. We use Econyl yarn fabric, designed in Italy by a company called Aquafil. The fabric is made out of old waste products, such as old nylon or fishing nets and sewn up into wonderful swimwear that’s also wonderful for the planet. The process used to create the fabric uses less than 10% of the global warming processes that traditional fabric factories use, plus it reuses waste materials.

We have just recently transitioned to compostable mailers from Hero Packaging, an Australian brand dedicated to helping our planet. To compost the mailers, remove labels, cut them up and place in your compost bin as “brown materials”. We use recyclable or reusable wrap that doesn’t require any sticky-tape, further minimising wastage.

Works in Progress

At Ukiyo, we believe that everyone involved in the process of making our dresses should be fairly compensated and paid a living wage. We have a solid understanding after receiving the fabric; however, prior to this, we want more transparency and a better understanding of the people involved. We have been assured that all workers in our Linen production factories have a safe working environment. All the mills are long-established, family-run businesses who we work with directly, rather than purchasing through an agent. Despite this, the families are very private and language barriers can make it difficult to get a full insight on the process. In the future, we are aiming to complete our vision of full transparency from crop to completion.

If you have any recommendations, questions or comments on our brand’s transparency, please feel free to contact us via email or send us a DM on Instagram.

Thanks for reading!