A better approach to fashion

We released our very first Progress Report which highlighted our brand’s progress and challenges in 2023. Over 2023, we have continued to take a sustainable approach towards building our brand, tracking our progress, achievements and goals.

Staying true to our value of transparency, we have tracked our progress and want to keep you updated on our progress, achievements, and goals - as we continue to learn and evolve.

From launching our made-to-order range to supporting beneficiaries, we’ve tried to measure and manage our social and environmental impact across the business. While we’ve laid the groundwork and made some headway, we recognise that we’ve still got a lot more to do, so we’re setting goals to continuously improve our impact.

In this Progress Report, you’ll find more updates about where our brand is at, challenges we’re facing and where we hope to be in the coming year.

With love,
Alicia

Environmental responsibility

In 2022, we committed to lowering our impact by streamlining our product range and scaling back on new product launches with the goal of designing better and reducing the amount of products we were putting out. With overproduction in the fashion industry at an all time high, we moved part of our range towards a made-to-order model, rejecting disposable fashion and textile waste. This radical approach is our way of reshaping buying habits and advocating for quality and longevity.

Modular designs for a capsule wardrobe

We reject the notion of fashion being fast and disposable. Our design process is considerate and deliberate, and it takes months from the time we sketch our designs till they reach your doorstep. 

Our intention is to design long-lasting products that are made for everyday wear, and we look to you, our wearer, for inspiration and feedback. We design with the entire lifecycle in mind, and continuously look to improve our design process so we can eventually close the loop. 

For us, better design is where innovation, problem-solving and sustainability come together.

It means designing clothes you will reach for every single day, and keep for a really long time. It means understanding what you want before putting pen to paper. It also means sourcing the most versatile and comfortable fabrics. And because better design means making good decisions every step of the way, we’re constantly working on perfecting our design process.

 

Where we’re at

We believe in quality over quantity. Fast fashion brands churn out collections for as many as 52 micro-seasons for constant newness. Our calendar looks very different. 

 

Made-to-order 

To prevent any wastage from excess inventory, each of our styles are launched in small capsules instead of huge collections seasonally. As of 2020, we have chosen to launch more of our capsules on a pre-order basis. This is our way of encouraging more thoughtful and conscious shopping habits, as we strive to change the current consumption patterns propelled by fast fashion brands.

 

Where we’re at

 

Sustainable fabrics

When Esse was founded in 2017, one of our first commitments was the use of natural fibers. While we may have limited ourselves to this category of textiles, their qualities: softness, strength, and lower environmental footprint surpass that of synthetic fabrics and help us create long-lasting, high quality garments that can be worn for many years.

Because much of the environmental impact of fashion happens at the raw materials stage, fibre selection is important to us: it affects the way you’ll care for the garment and how your garment goes back to the earth eventually.

 

 

 

 

Where we’re at

This year, we continue to push our sourcing boundaries, discovering the most beautiful natural-coloured cotton that has been woven with organic yarn of brown and green cotton. Skipping the production process of dyeing, which is the most polluting step of the textile production, this beautiful fabric remains almost as pristine as nature intended, without the use of bleaching agents or dyes.

This particular textile also marks a new frontier for our commitment to a more transparent supply chain. From understanding where the yarns are made and fabrics are woven, we were able to work closely with our Japanese fabric supplier to trace the source of where these natural cottons are grown.

 

 

Better packaging

The fashion and apparel industry standard is such that all garments are shipped

from vendors to brands in plastic packaging for protection against the elements during transit. 

Transitioning away from plastic packaging has long been an industry-wide challenge: shipping garments unprotected can result in damages and even further waste.

For now, we have been working with our makers to reuse plastic packaging. So far, our makers in Bao Loc utilise existing plastic packaging that they have to ship our products in. 

For packaging that goes to our customers, we have always favored low impact packaging, and have opted not to use excessive branded materials in packages. Our mailers are all made from recycled paper making them 100% recyclable, biodegradable, and compostable. We encourage all our packaging to be reused and repurposed and have embarked on a trial with Package Pals to make our packaging more circular. So far, the take-up rate for this initiative has been slow, and we are trying to find ways to encourage customers to send their mailer envelopes back to us to be reused.

 

Ongoing

Our larger goal is to reduce our use of virgin plastic. In 2023, we sent all the plastic packaging we have collected back to our makers for reuse - keeping them in a loop for as long as possible and have eliminated approx 5.3kg worth of single-use plastic (approx. 686 pieces of plastic packaging) in our supply chain.  

Social responsibility

Made in a better way 

Ensuring that all our garments are produced under safe, fair, legal and humane working conditions is a cornerstone of Esse. We partner with our makers and work closely with them to mitigate any harm created during the manufacturing process. 

Our ethical practices within our supply chain are a core part of our mission of supporting women-identifying individuals through safe working conditions, living wages, equal opportunities for advancement in the workplace, representation in ownership and leadership, and more.

 

 

   

Ongoing

We continue our commitment to collaborate with makers who are socially compliant. As we continue to expand categories, we are looking to add additional woman-owned factory partners in 2023 and work with makers to understand and reduce our environmental impact together. 

As we negotiate directly with our makers within our supply chain on production prices, we have an opportunity to ensure that they are earning a discretionary income above the living wage.  

 

Challenges

Most of our makers are small businesses or home-based tailors who work with a collective of seamstresses within their region. This makes it challenging for us to conduct third party audits to determine whether our makers meet globally recognised ethical standards. 

We understand that these tailors are essentially running their own small business, and do not want to be subjected to our values and beliefs on how their business should be conducted or how they should operate. This is why we have relied on internal audits, by personally visiting the workshop facilities and makers’ homes to develop a better understanding of how they work and operate. Many of our makers are like family to us, and we build on this close relationship to help them to grow with us.

 

Giving back 

Community is incredibly important to us and we feel strongly about giving back. We continue to seek out causes and find ways to work with non-profit organisations so we can support and grow the community together.

In 2022, we partnered with AWARE and Seven Clean Seas to raise funds and support their causes. In March 2022, we hosted a fundraiser for AWARE (Association of Women for Action and Research) to celebrate International Women’s Day. With #BreakTheBias as the official IWD slogan for 2022, we rallied customers and donated proceeds from a curated collection to AWARE. The donations went to AWARE's research, programmes and services for women and girls in need, supporting their work to identify and eliminate gender-based barriers through research, advocacy, education, training and support services.

In July 2022, we partnered with 3 local artists, Beeyarnd, Poptsie Paper Co. and The Weird and Wild, to raise funds for the social enterprise, Seven Clean Seas. The artists created three limited edition art totebags and proceeds from the sale of these limited-edition art totes were donated to Seven Clean Seas. We superseded our target to remove a total of 134kg worth of plastic from the seas.

 

Our 2023 Sustainability Goals 

Responsibly sourced trims

This year, we wanted to push the envelope and hold ourselves to an even higher standard when selecting materials for our designs. Sustainable fabrics are just the tip of the iceberg, considering that our garments are made up of many other components like garment tags, buttons and zips.

In order for a garment to be fully sustainable, we had to focus on every component, even the trims that make up our garments. This means sourcing trims that will meet our criteria of comfort, quality, and environmental and social welfare. 

Given that each garment is made up of at least four different components: fabric, garment tags, fastenings and thread, we set a goal to transition 50% of our trims to biodegradable and/ or recycled materials and to be sourced from traceable, ethical and certified sources.

Availability, cost, and quality remain the biggest bottlenecks when it comes to responsible sourcing, and for a small brand, we rely on the industry’s collective shift towards sustainability across functions and processes, in order to create opportunities for more biodegradable and recycled materials to be widely available.

 

What we’ve achieved

We have partnered with a new supplier that recycles post-consumer PET bottles to make recycled polyester interlinings. Our supplier is BCI, C2C Gold, bluesign, ECO-CHECK, Global Recycled Standard, Higg Index, ISO 14001, ISO 9001, OEKO-TEX® Standard 100, REACH and Restricted Substances List certified and uses cutting-edge technologies in its manufacturing processes to minimise their impact on the environment, like energy harvesting technologies, zero liquid discharge, and monitoring systems, ensuring that our interlining is made in the most responsible standards.

 

Challenges

While we have managed to find a recycled polyester option for our zips, we were not able to transition to this option as we were unable to meet the minimum order quantities.

Other trims that we still struggle with are in smaller categories where sustainable options are still not widely available; in which we would have to create entirely new supply chains. 

 

Ongoing

In the coming year, we will continue to source for more sustainable options for our trims, and will need to rely on a more discerning design process to minimise the use of less sustainable notions e.g. zips, elastic bands and interfacing. 

We will be actively reviewing all our trims and sourcing processes so we can continue to provide future updates on our goal in this area.

 

Diversity and inclusiveness

We recognise that it is our responsibility to use our platform to educate, inform, and provide resources for direct action and engagement in challenging deeply embedded social concepts and constructs in order to stay true to our vision of redefining the fashion industry. 

We commit to making strides in our practices of inclusivity, diversity, and representation. This meant challenging preconceived notions of beauty, womanhood, and representation on our platform.

 

What we’ve achieved

We have gradually expanded our size range to a new 7-size run for selected products, and we will continuously improve and expand our size offering throughout the year. With made-to-order, we can now cater to even more women and we aim to be more size-inclusive in 2023.

 

Ongoing

Our work is a continuous one, and we will continue to include more voices in our content to reflect, respect, and represent the abundance of beauty, diversity, and humanity in our shared world. 

Traceability down to our fabric mills

Understanding our supply chain is fundamental for building a collaborative relationship across our supply chain.

Traceability is the ability of a brand to trace the production of its products throughout the supply chain. When a brand has purview of its supply chain, it can work with each partner to ensure that those working within the supply chain are respected and all are following environmental compliance practices. This is crucial to managing environmental and social impact, and why we’re committed to documenting our entire supply chain.

 

What we’ve achieved

This year our goal was to be able to trace our supply chain down to the mill level. The mills are where the fabric is made; where yarn is woven or knit into fabric. 

This year was spent working closely with the fabric suppliers that we have been partnering with over the years and new fabric suppliers that we have brought onboard to understand more about the fabric mills.

The supply chain is a complex web of subcontractors, agents and wholesalers and approximately 16% of the fabric suppliers whom we work with are wholesalers or agents who wholesale fabrics from different fabric mills. 

As a small business with limited resources and reach, we have found it challenging to trace our entire global supply chains. The thing that we can control is the vetting process, and this year we have put in place a process where all new suppliers have to provide all relevant documentation relating to the details of their fabric mills, material composition and certifications before our working relationship with them progresses any further. 

100% of the new fabric suppliers that we have brought on in 2021 were fabric manufacturers and they were required to share details of their production process as well as all the relevant documentation and certification, which includes, but is not limited to the addresses of their factories, material composition, processing steps and names of subcontractors (if any) in the processing steps. The information on the certifications are usually audited by an independent third-party  organisation and ensures that our suppliers meet our minimum expectations in environmental and social performance. 

 

Challenges

Traceability remains a significant challenge across the industry. As a small brand we are constantly challenged by the bigger organisations when we try to obtain more information due to our small order quantities. 

Ongoing

In the coming year, we will be working closely with our suppliers to understand the other tiers of our supply chain further, so we can eventually reach our goal of full product traceability.

 

Repair programme

Our mission to transform the fashion industry to one that is more circular means 'sustaining' is no longer enough. Besides designing out waste and pollution, we want to start keeping our products and materials in use for a longer period of time. With that in mind, we launched a repair programme for all of Esse's garments so we can move towards our goal of circularity.

 

By encouraging our customers to rewear, repair and repurpose their garments, we can extend the life cycle of these resources. In addition, we want to continue to engage and educate our customers and community, through providing resources and tools to make it convenient for them to extend the life of their clothes.

 

What we’ve achieved

Our Repair Programme was launched in July 2021 for all of Esse’s customers. The Repair Programme covers any Esse item that needs repair and is offered complimentary to most garments, with more complicated mending and repairs subject to a repair fee.

We have also decided to expand the scope of our repair programme by offering free DIY repair tutorials and resources that empower our community to extend the life cycle of their garment.

The future looks bright

As a brand, we are looking forward to the future, because we believe that our actions today can have a positive impact for building a better, more equitable and sustainable future. We are excited that we are on our way to achieving our goals, and we will continue to move the needle forward with a brand and business model redesign, helping you to make more sustainable decisions, while making your everyday wardrobe more complete.

What we have learnt is that achieving true sustainability is not a series of checkboxes that we can check off, but instead a work in progress. There is no silver bullet, but a combination of a lot of small innovations and radical changes. We are grateful to have you, a supportive community of creatives, collaborators and customers to back us and help us meet our goals. It was our pleasure to share our Progress Report with you, and we look forward to providing continual updates on our progress.