Sustainability is at the heart of everything that we do. Besides designing beautiful ethical and sustainable garments, we continue to find ways in which we can run our business to minimize our waste, water and energy footprint.

Smart Designs

As designers, we are accountable for the entire lifecycle of a garment. That’s why we are committed to developing thoughtful and innovative designs that are functional and that minimise textile waste. All other textile scraps get salvaged and used in our OFFCUTS capsule.

 

Recycling

We try to recycle our textile scraps whenever possible to meet our zero waste goal on the cutting room floor, and launched our OFFCUTS capsule in 2018 to find creative ways to reduce textile waste. OFFCUTS is conceptualised around upcycling and salvaging our textile scraps by collaborating with artists and designers in other fields to create new objects from textile waste.

 

Ecommerce

On average, online businesses use about 30% less energy than traditional retail and that’s good news for us, because so many of you shop with us online. We continue to retail most of our capsules online to make our garments accessible, avoiding the traditional retail markups and passing the savings on to you, and the earth.

 

Packaging

Our packaging is plastic-free and made from 100% recycled paper products, and we opt for packaging with minimal to no branding so that you can reuse and repurpose them (re-gifting can be sexy sometimes). The plastic packaging that our garments get stored in are reused at least 5-6 times, so that we can cut down on single use plastic. It’s the best we can do at the moment, but we want to get better. If you have solutions for compostable or biodegradable waterproof packaging, we’d love to chat.

We’ve also embarked on a trial with Package Pals to make our packaging more circular. Package Pals is a circular packaging initiative founded by Rachel Lee and Rachel Han to combat the waste from single-use packaging. Their goal is to extend the life cycle of packaging that typically has a single-use lifespan and they do this by collecting used packaging (such as poly mailers, paper envelopes and more) from the public and redistributing them to independent sellers.

From July - September 2020, Package Pals will collect all used Esse packaging and send them back to us to check, clean and redistribute for reuse.

Customers can participate in this initiative in two ways:

-Opt for reused Esse mailer envelopes and enjoy free shipping
-Return Esse mailer envelopes for reuse and earn Esse reward points

Learn more about this initiative here.

 

OEKO-TEX® Standard

Some of the linens that we use are OEKO-TEX certified. OEKO-TEX certification ensures that hazardous chemicals in dyed fabric like carcinogens, azo dyes and other chemical are not present.

 

Service and Collaborations

We think it’s pretty cool when you can give back to the community, and we have collaborated with non-profit organisations like STAR shelter, a refuge for survivors of domestic violence, for our #WomenforWomen initiative.

In addition, we partner with like-minded individuals like The Fashion Pulpit, a swapping community, by donating our archive and sample pieces to their Auction Swap events.

We continue to seek out causes and find ways to work with non-profit organisations so we can support and grow the community together.