Sustainable & Responsible Brands

Patagonia

Yvon Chouinard started Chouinard Equipment in 1957, hand-forging pitons in a Burbank backyard so climbers wouldn't have to keep pounding soft European pitons into Yosemite granite. He named the clothing arm Patagonia in 1973. Its product DNA was set early: the rugby shirt and the Capilene polypropylene baselayer; later, the Synchilla fleece and the recycled-PET Nano Puff. Every choice was anchored to a belief that great outdoor gear should last decades and be relatively easy to repair.

Veja

Veja was founded in 2004 in Paris by Sébastien Kopp and François-Ghislain Morillion as a contemporary luxury sneaker brand specifically focused on what the founders described as 'a deliberately-sustainable, deliberately-transparent sneaker manufacturing supply chain.' The brand's foundational thesis was specific and rigorous: produce contemporary luxury sneakers using only fair-trade-sourced organic cotton from Brazilian smallholder farmers, wild-rubber from the Amazonian rainforest (working with Brazilian rubber-tapper cooperatives), and natural-vegetable-tanned leather — at a contemporary luxury price tier that priced the supply-chain transparency into the product.

Nudie Jeans

Nudie Jeans was founded in 2001 in Gothenburg, Sweden by Maria Erixon Levin and Joakim Levin as a Swedish-anchored denim brand specifically focused on raw-and-unwashed selvedge denim — a deliberate contrast to the heavily-processed pre-distressed denim that defined the early-2000s mass-market denim category. The brand's foundational thesis was specific and craft-driven: produce raw-denim jeans that customers would break in personally over months and years of wear, creating individual fading patterns and natural-distressing as a deliberate alternative to factory-pre-distressing.

Norse Projects

Norse Projects was founded in 2004 in Copenhagen by Tobia Sloth, Anton Juul, and Mikkel Grønnebæk as a multi-brand concept store that quickly began producing its own clothing alongside its retail. The shop on Pilestræde — still operating as the brand's flagship — established a particular sensibility: Danish design rigour, Japanese workwear references, technical performance fabrics, and a colour palette that runs from oat to mineral to dust.

KSENIASCHNAIDER

Reformation

Allbirds

Houdini Sportswear

Houdini Sportswear was founded in 1993 in Stockholm by a small Swedish outdoor-design team specifically focused on what the founders described as 'a deliberately-sustainable, deliberately-circular Scandinavian technical-outdoor vocabulary anchored to closed-loop fabric production and recyclable single-fabric construction.' The brand has been one of the defining post-1993 Scandinavian-anchored 'sustainable-technical-outdoor' brands.

Klättermusen

Klättermusen was founded in 1975 in Åre, Sweden by Peter Askulv as a small workshop producing mountaineering gear for serious Scandinavian alpinists. The brand's name (literally 'climbing mouse') and its founding ethos were inseparable from a particular kind of patient, mountain-rooted Swedish craft: every piece designed by an active climber, every fabric chosen for genuine alpine performance, every garment guaranteed for lifetime repair.

And Wander

and wander was founded in 2011 in Tokyo by Keita Ikeuchi and Mihoko Mori, both veterans of Issey Miyake (Ikeuchi was Naoki Takizawa's right hand at Miyake Design Studio). The brand's thesis is unusually specific: technical apparel for serious trail running and mountain hiking, but designed and presented within the visual and textile language of Japanese contemporary fashion. Each piece is engineered around a particular mountain-running use case rather than a general 'outdoor' market.