Everett Swim

We hit a massive milestone this week. Exciting things to come 🩲🩲😬

While turtles are cute, charismatic, and catch our attention, it’s crucial to protect ocean animals and habitats even when we can’t see them so easily.

In particular, for centuries humans have been using the oceans as dumping grounds for waste. They seemed so vast, how could it ever make an impact? Well now we are finding out.

Discarded or ‘lost’ netting entraps marine life all the way up the food chain, and eventually breaks down into microscopic pieces that are ingested by fish and planktonic creatures, or clog gills.

Everett swimwear is made of nylon regenerated from nets like these that have been reclaimed from the sea, and other sources of pre-loved nylon. It shouldn’t have to be this way, but it’s a good start.

📸 by Ahmed Areef, used under licence

🪡🧵What does hand-made even mean anyway?
🩲🩲
The fashion and textile manufacture industry is full of these ambiguous words. For example, ‘hand made’ could still mean a sewing machine has been used, it doesn’t necessarily imply ‘hand-sewn.’ ‘Hand-crafted’ is also unregulated. And ‘machine-made’ doesn’t mean a garment has been made by robots. One is not better than the other either, but of course hand-sewing, or ‘sewn-by-hand’ takes longer and is very labour intensive, but allows for incredible attention to detail.

Hand-made on a machine is much faster, but that doesn’t mean a person needs less skill! A good sewing machinist uses a lifetime of expertise, with the efficiency and mechanical consistency and less risk of repetitive strain injury.

So, ask the questions. If your clothes say hand-made, hand-crafted, or hand-sewn, ask yourself whether the price seems reasonable in terms of the labour cost. Seek out these answers to hold the industry to account. If there is no information at all, there’s a good possibility your clothes may have been made in sweatshop conditions in a country where transparency and human rights aren’t a high priority.

That’s why we decided to create our swimwear locally in Australia, so that we could actually meet the people involved in creating our product, and be able to trust that everything is above board, and that we’re using transparent unambiguous terminology to describe how things are made.

We also use manufacturers and suppliers who are accredited by Ethical Clothing Australia - which provides us with the confidence that these issues have been addressed independently.

📸 used under licence

Fish are friends! These divers are saving a friend from some ghost netting. Ghost nets are lost or discarded from the fishing industry. There are efforts all over the world to help educate about why throwing waste into the ocean isn’t responsible.

In the meantime, we also need to clean things up!

Recycling the materials from end-of-life nets provides a valuable incentive to not throw them away, and a source of nylon for products like Everett!

📸 used under licence

“Smoulder” - an homage to charred landscapes. Wispy smoke from eucalyptus oils, and scorched earth.
Super hot fires aren’t desirable, but certainly we need the slower, cooler, perfectly timed fire and smoke to manage Australian ecosystems.

📸 used under licence

Moments of greenery in urban landscapes are always welcome. In the future, perhaps it will instead be moments of concrete amongst greenery?

📸 by S Taylor