A Montreal designer is going against the trend of controversial disposable fashion from Chinese giants Temu and Shein with her outdoor clothing designed and designed here to be more sustainable to avoid mass waste.
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“We make durable, versatile clothes that don’t follow trends so that we can wear them for a long time, without having to buy them all the time,” says Journal Stéphanie Noël, co-founder and vice-president of design at Indyeva.
“To avoid waste, we produce after having an order form in hand,” she summarizes.
Co-founded by Stéphanie Noël, Jean-Pierre Ferrandez (ex-owner of Lolë) and Martin Gauthier (Sid Lee ambassador) in 2014, Indyeva has around twenty employees.
The Quebec SME has imposed its coats in MEC, SAIL, La Cordée, Sports Experts/Atmosphere and Altitude Sports. She believes that her clothes are “an investment rather than an expense of fast fashion».
While Temu and Shein are criticized from all sides for the quality of the clothes sold, Indyeva prefers not to follow in their footsteps and take another path.
“It doesn’t do anything. In the end, we pay two or three times more because we always buy clothes,” illustrates Stéphanie Noël.
Image provided by Indyeva
Against the trends
Au Journal, she says that her coats are not “the flavor of the moment”, that is to say that she does not follow passing fashions, but rather her own trends.
“I never believed in trends. It channels everyone in the same direction. It makes clothes that go from one year to the next,” she breathes.
Her pieces are designed in Quebec and manufactured abroad for the moment, but Stéphanie Noël would like to one day make them here if the manufacturing industry recovers.
What also makes Indyeva strong, according to its co-founder, is that since the beginnings of the SME, the clothes have been created for women and are not just pale copies of men’s coats adapted for women, like Several major brands do it.
“They pay a little more for their product, but it is still beautiful after a year, after two years. Last week, a customer came to make a repair on a coat that she has had for 10 years,” emphasizes Stéphanie Noël.
“We repair coats for free. We lend clothes to our customers while we repair them. The customer feels respected,” she concludes.
Highlight
For a fourth year in a row, Indyeva has won the Polartec Apex competition, highlighting the fashion design of innovative and sustainable products. Polartec is the company that invented the famous thriller.
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