Model wearing sustainable basics in long fiber organic cotton.
Organic Basics was created in 2015 by four Danish men. They thought 'that buying poor quality, fast fashion is a lot like peeing your pants when you’re cold - feels nice at first, but it’s not so good later on.'
Their Copenhagen based clothing company puts sustainability at the core of everything.
Fabrics
Rayon, cupra, viscose and mimosa, commonly used in fast fashion, are harmful to our oceans and our health and are the dirty fabrics Organic Basics will never use. Their cotton is grown without toxic substances, no pesticides, no chemical fertilizer, no nasty chemicals and no genetically modified seeds. It is also colored with organic dyes.
Fact: Silver can be used in clothes as an antimicrobial instead of endocrine disrupting chemicals commonly used in fast fashion.
Models wearing SilverTech Active collection. Shop SilverTech Women's. Shop SilverTech Men's.
Organic Basics uses real silver in their SilverTech collection. They inform us that 'Silver has historically been used as an antimicrobial piece of technology. The ancient greeks would put silver coins into their water to keep it clean and pure.
Silver is also thermodynamic, meaning that the fabric keeps you cool in the summer, and warmer in the winter. Only very small amounts of silver are required for their SilverTech products to achieve highly effective odor control performance. An example is that 5,000 garments require the same amount of silver as two silver rings.'
For their SilverTech 2.0 and Invisible collections Organic Basics partnered with a leading Italian textile company that produces mechanically recycled nylon.
Fact: 'Recycled nylon uses 80% less and creates 90% fewer CO2 emissions compared to regular nylon.'
Washing Smarter
Fact: '⅔ of the environmental impact of a piece of clothing is created at the consumer phase.'
Meaning that, as consumers, we have the ability to largely improve how much waste and pollution the fashion industry creates. Organic Basics provides us with a list of things we can do to minimise our fashion footprint:
Model wearing Organic Basics Invisible collection.
'Only wash when needed'
This is a way to save water, electricity, detergent and make your clothes last longer!
According to Organic Basics, 'next time you don’t do laundry in a while, you’re not being lazy, you’re just being a super chill environmentalist.'
'Skip the dryer'
Fact: 'If you hang your clothes to dry just six months of the year, you’ll eliminate up to 300kg of greenhouse gas. A kettle uses 195g every time you make your morning coffee. So if you heated up the kettle every morning for 42 years you’d get about the same environmental impact.'
'Wash cold'
Washing at 30℃ or 40℃ also saves energy and makes your clothes last longer. Organic Basics also inform us that 'clothing fibres are not the biggest fans of heat. You don’t need to wash your basics at 60℃, we promise. Even going from 40℃ to 30℃ could be your peaceful protest against that housemate of yours that doesn’t believe in global warming. Yeah, you tell em’.'
'Spot on, Spot off'
Organic Basics encourage you to 'Use your Mr. Miyagi skills if it’s only dirty in one tiny place. Just take a small clean wet sponge or cloth and dab, dab, dab. No, not that kind of dabbing. Or you could be creative and cover it up with a cool accessory - like a fanny-pack, or a fat gold chain.'
