Sustainable fashion brands MAKU UK and Effei Clothing Chat to Salt post Brighton pop-up 

Sustainable fashion brands MAKU UK and Effei Clothing Chat to Salt post Brighton pop-up 

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There are multiple ways to shop consciously now; buying second hand, mending old clothes or handing down clothes to friends and family. With that said, if you are going to shop new, there are plenty of brands out there doing it ethically and sustainably. So we might as well tell you about a few of Salt’s favourite brands right now, using creative ways to be sustainable in an often greenwashed and over-saturated market.

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MAKU UK and Effei Clothing featured at a pop-up shop in Hanningtons lanes this summer. Organised by Lizzy Bishop, director of Brighton Sustainable Fashion Week. Bishop created her brand Betty and The Brands, to showcase some of the emerging and exciting talent in sustainable fashion. 

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Suzan Aral, founder and creative director of MAKU UK is all about making “useful beautiful things from leather industry discards.” After Aral learned statistics such as, “a natural product such as a leather hide or a sheepskin has so many variables. If you're trying to produce a large batch of anything, the large batch might be only 10 jackets, you might need 6, 8, 10 hides or sheepskin that match one another and match each in that range of 10 jackets. Therefore a lot gets discarded just because maybe the sheen is slightly different. Then of course there's all the discards from natural blemishes, holes in the material. Perhaps the printing or the dyeing hasn't gone as equally. So all of those and there's also of course off-cuts, regardless of all of that. Yes, a lot of waste and I just decided that there were obviously some really nice uses for it. My aim is to make useful, beautiful things.” 

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Suzan started out as a graphic designer and has always been involved in art in one way or another along her career path. Aral goes on to explain how this love of creating and using waste turned into a clothing brand. “I have always been interested in less waste and making use of what other people deem as waste. So it kind of sprung out of that.” Suzan started out making three batches of shoes from leather off-cuts, which launched in 2021 and hasn't looked back since. Growing from strength to strength and expanding their range to include hats, bags, reversible gilets and plenty of other goodies. They have also just launched their first hand-painted range. But we will get into that later. 

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Suzan wanted to highlight the challenges of relying solely on off-cuts, “we always have limited edition products because of the finite amount of any waste that you find. It is a challenge for us to manage because sometimes the batches can be very small.” This highlights the importance of talking about these brands to spread awareness on alternatives to fast fashion as well as celebrating people's creative ways to combat the waste from the fashion industry. There is still of course a long way to go with the fashion industry as a whole regarding sustainability, but Suzan is combaiting it one slipper at time. 

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Talking of slippers, we start to chat about some of the garments created by the leather off-cuts. Starting with the  bestsellers, it’s interesting to see what designs have caught people's attention. From their staple handbags to cosy slippers, Suzan has made some customer favourites. Excitingly, MAKU UK have just teamed up with, “artist Melissa White who has created a unique design for our handmade POLIN slip-ons. This will be a micro batch of slippers made from leather industry seconds. Melissa will be hand-painting her beautiful acanthus leaf pattern on just five pairs.” Suzan explained the backstory of these leather off-cuts. Saying that leather being used is very nice but has slightly uneven surfaces and got rejected because of this. Luckily, White can work around the patches that aren't suitable and make the most out of the fabric they have. 

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From collaborations with interior designers and artists to working with craftsmen in Istanbul, Suzan shares her experiences of growing up around feltmaking and now working with a feltmaker in Turkey. “I remember seeing some felt making around the country, but it was disappearing even then, because it's a very labour intensive process. The only places you might see traditional felt used is under saddles in more rural areas.” However, Suzan went on to find a felt maker in Turkey, which she kindly persuaded to start feltmaking again, as he was in the process of closing up shop because of such few customers. Yet, Suzan convinced him to keep going and “now he produces for us and other people too. When he was affected by the earthquake last February last year, sadly, there was a lot of damage to his home and the whole city, but he's now back and working again which is great. We'd love to do more of that and we're investigating natural dying at the moment too.”

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I asked how she found these contacts, as Suzan now lives in England with a studio in Hastings, I imagine it must be difficult to find these international craftsmen. Suzan explains how “it's just research, originally word of mouth we were asking people we knew back in Turkey for connections that might work. It was an awful lot of emails and phone calls going back and forth and slowly trying samples out and then building from there. The industry is always changing and since we've started in just three, four years, due to things like the Ukrainian war and the way trade goes, it's certainly an industry in flux, as I imagine the fashion industry is as a whole. Though we're having to ride those waves and find our way through as novices, it's a challenge but we're slowly growing.”

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MAKU UK certainly has been growing! They have previously featured pop-ups in John Lewis and Oxford Street. The brand also regularly attends big events like Stanmer Park’s Makers Fair in Brighton, the art festival Hastings Bronze and is involved with Brighton’s Sustainable Fashion Week. There are also plans to open a shop, in their work premises the DEPO in Hastings and will be open for the first two weeks in September. Suzan explains how, "we designed our workspace in Hastings, aka the DEPO, so it can also be used by others interested in wasting less. To date we have hosted many events including pop-up sales, sewing groups and art classes – all with sustainability at their core.”

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If you're interested in any of the lovely garments I've been talking about, then I’ve listed her website and socials below.

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www.maku.uk

@maku_uk

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Similar to MAKU, the next clothing brand Salt spoke to was Effei Clothing. Who, like MAKU UK, holds traditional skills and techniques close to the brand’s heart. 

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Italian designer Aurora Circelli explains in her own words the ethos of the brand “Effei tells the story of cultural diversity through its creations, offering the opportunity to explore and learn about different cultures from their textile tradition. Wearing cultures is the motto that defines the company’s path."

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I asked what got her into fashion and she explained how a love for creating and clothing started young as her grandparents and mum owned a clothes shop. “Since I was a child, I used to always be in contact with clothes. Every time I would get clothes and paint them, cut them and turn them into something different. I think building something unique has always been my point of view.” Circelli added, however, that she doesn't like the word fashion. It has connotations and makes her think of the more toxic traits of the industry.  Saying it can be hard to explain this sometimes, but I understand the discussion of semantics and can see her point of view. 

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Circelli goes on to describe how she got from playing with clothes in her family's shop to starting her own brand. “Right after the pandemic, it was a very busy and chaotic period. I've actually been working on it for three years before, while I was studying economics and management in Rome. I was studying economics but I really wanted to do something related to travel. So, I said okay, let's make the first t-shirt. I was not really aware of what it could be. But my desire, my goal, has always been that I want to be in contact with artisans all over the world, to buy and make clothing from it.”After fully committing to making this idea a reality, that's when Aurora Circelli’s clothing brand really came together. “When I decided to start the company, I thought now I can make a real collection. So I can really work with authentic fabrics and it's all about traditional techniques. Sustainability was one of our pillars from the start. I didn't want to make something sustainable just for the environment. No it would be something responsible and much more of a social responsibility as well. 

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By creating a brand centred around these traditional skills, Aurora is helping to keep traditions and cultures alive as well as keeping local business in business. The only problem is how do you start a brand based around travel and international artisanal makers in the middle of Covid? “Actually my first idea was to travel all over the world, being in contact with artisans, but of course, like for many, it was pretty impossible to be physically there.” After a lot of research, persistently calling people and many many emails later she began to build some relationships and slowly began visiting countries again after the pandemic.

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Salt wanted to find out about some of the more obscure or interesting techniques Circelli had picked up along her travels. “One of them is the Batik, Asian Batik in Bali. Something about it is just stunning. First of all, they need to put wax on the cloth and then you’re gonna dye all those clothes in natural dyes. Even making that natural dye is a whole other process and it takes a lot of time, it's pretty hard. After removing wax, it's just something you know, it's very unnatural. It looks really printed with loads of different shades.” Circelli goes on to explain how it's difficult to pick out a best seller when all the fabrics are different. However, Aurora does include one garment that particularly stands out to her customers. “It's hard picking a bestseller. Every time people fall in love with one specific fabric. But of course the best seller is Autonomy, that's the Mexican one. I think it's the colours and you can really see and touch the hand embroidery.”  Circelli continues to add her personal favourite which is “the Salizada, that is the only Italian one. It's fabric from Venice, I think I love it, not just because it's from Italy, but because I saw them working in the lab. It's really impressive and very hard working with a loom.”

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The designer has enjoyed doing pop-ups abroad in the past in London and Italy and adds on the importance of seeing clothes in person. Stating passionately that clothes are meant to be touched and tried on. A physical shop is a completely different experience to buying online. 

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Until Aurora hosts another event in the UK, we will have to wait and buy online in the meantime. So her website and socials are linked below if you fancy a browse.

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www.effeiclothing.com/web/?lang=en

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@effei_clothingbrand

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