Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 22, 1992 TAG: 9203190253
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ELISABETH DUNHAM ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO LENGTH: Medium
The youth-oriented clothier last week introduced its "Ecollection" of environmentally sensitive threads, intended for hip, socially responsible customers.
Every fiber of the new line is politically correct, from organically grown, naturally colored cotton to wooden buttons painted by artisans in a low-income cooperative in North Carolina.
"To look at the clothing you wouldn't know it was anything different," said Lynda Grose, Esprit's head designer, who came up with the line. "It's like organic fruit or food. It's the process behind that is different."
The Ecollection, ranging from casual cotton overalls to linen suits, retains Esprit's wholesome but easygoing California style.
But being kind to the environment didn't come naturally. It took planning, and meant making numerous special requests to textile mills, Grose said.
It was so difficult to find a mill that would handle organic cotton, for example, that the spinning was done at a college in Texas, she said.
Fabrics were preshrunk mechanically to leave out polluting formaldehyde used in most finishing processes. Eliminated was electroplating, an environmentally hazardous process commonly used to rustproof metal notions in clothing; instead, the metals were made from non-rusting alloys.
None of the clothing was bleached, something usually required before fabric can be dyed.
"It's not a hundred-percent green," Grose said. "You have a certain vision, but as you study it you understand what the possibilities are. Almost everything we ask for is going against the flow."
Thus, the Ecollection was about 30 percent more expensive to produce than Esprit's other clothing, Grose said. The customer will pay about 10 percent more for the new line; the company will absorb the other 20 percent, she said.
Esprit, a privately held corporation, was co-founded in San Francisco in 1968 by Susie and Doug Tompkins, who are now divorced. She runs the company and remains the majority shareholder.
Esprit isn't the first San Francisco-based clothier to go natural.
Levi Strauss & Co., the world's largest clothing manufacturer, last year introduced brown denims made from naturally colored cotton that needs no dye and deepens in hue instead of fading. The company plans a national distribution of the "coyote brown" men's jeans next summer.
by CNB