Living Breathing Sustainability - Mara Hoffman by Jo Zugic

On Wednesday we were fortunate enough to visit the New York office of Mara Hoffman. Mara Hoffman started her namesake label in 2000 after graduating from Parsons School of Design, encompassing ready to wear, swimwear, children’s wear and bridal. In 2015, the brand has made some significant changes in everything from the fabrics used, packaging to the color pallet of the recent collections.

The brand, like most others, started from humble beginnings. Mara started the brand by hand dyeing fabrics in her apartment and visiting consignment stores every week. She received a lot of no’s, but her outlook was so positive that she took every no as a “yes, I’ll come back in two weeks and try again”. At first, the brand focused (like any other business) on success and profit. Once she had her son, things significantly changed. Mara realized that the problems facing the world then, would be passed onto her son’s generation to deal with. The realization was so profound for Mara that she considered closing her brand as she didn’t want to be a contributing factor to the problems that were becoming obvious. Luckily, she was talked out of it, and she instead focused on not only not being a problem but being a big part of the solution.

Mara and her team believe that today, you can’t do business without sustainability at the forefront. And they take sustainability very seriously, so much so that when they decided to go green, the business absorbed all the costs, to ensure that they could be sustainable, before passing them onto the customer.

Their showroom, where the meeting took place is furnished with all recycled materials. They hold action group meetings, which was developed with the belief that sustainability can start from bottom-up and everyone can play their part and do something. They have also developed a sustainability team, staff from all different departments such as sales and production are involved to drive sustainability.

In terms of production Mara Hoffman and her team, are doing the right thing throughout the whole process. They have switched to using organic cotton, hemp, linen, modal, Tencel and only use nylon and elastane in swimwear. They use sustainable trims such as corozo buttons (buttons made from corozo nuts). In terms of production Mara Hoffman, fabrics purchased from China are manufactured in China, fabrics purchased in India get manufactured in India, as to reduce the amount of travel a garment does in its lifecycle. They map out the whole supply chain all the way back to the fiber, but the process is hard.

In terms of packaging, Mara Hoffman uses recycled boxes and postage bags. The product arrives flat packed to save on space and reduce bulk. In addition, they use compostable polyethylene bags, but that comes with its challenges as most people don’t compost. They are in the process of working out a way to get the customers to return the bags to their local store, so they can do the composting.

On top the already amazing things that Mara Hoffman and her team are doing, they are also involved in bettering the lives of people that make their garments. In terms of labor laws, the follow each country’s guidelines and have additional standards they expect of their factories. Furthermore, they believe in social offset. Recently in India they have organized a visit form the Vision Clinic, where factory workers had their eyes checked and were provided with free glasses if they needed them. The Vision Clinic was recommended to Mara by another brand. It just goes to show how collaborative and willing to share information the sustainability community really is.

Over the years, with the renewed focus on sustainability, the aesthetic of the brand has changed. From bright psychedelic prints, the brand changed its color palette to colors and prints that are more timeless (polka dot and stripes).

The brand is very aware that most consumers don’t think of sustainability as a priority. While customers get engaged in conversation about sustainability, it is by no means the most important factor when it comes to making purchasing decisions.

And with all the amazing things already being done at Mara Hoffman, they don’t stop setting goals. Some of the goals they have set for the near future is to reduce carbon emissions, monitor water conversation, reduce inventory, to keep working on making their logistics and packaging greener and to one day own their own factory. The way Mara Hoffman and her team think should be the industry standard.