Fair Indigo Blog

In the world of fabric dyes there are 2 types – natural and synthetic. Natural dyes use items found in nature, such as minerals, roots, berries, bark, leaves, and wood to alter the color of fabric and yarns. At first blush, it would seem using natural dyes would be a natural extension of using organic cotton, which we use in the vast majority of our products. So why don’t we use natural dyes in our clothing?

Let’s talk plastic bags. They are a necessary evil in the world of clothing manufacturing – protecting your garment between our production facility in Peru to your doorstep. We’ve spent years searching for a solution that is a little gentler on the environment, and here it is!

French fries, German potato salad, Irish potato soup, Bengal potatoes. An international starch powerhouse, the humble potato is actually native to Peru, was domesticated there over 10,000 years ago, and was only introduced to Europe after the “discovery” of the Americas in the fifteenth century.

Every time I open my News app, Facebook, or, (why do i still?) Twitter, I find myself almost squinting one eye shut to avoid the latest evidence the world is spiraling toward oblivion. While we can’t bury our heads in the sand to bad news or real struggles, sometimes it helps to take a step back and realize that across the arc of human history, the world is actually getting better in many ways.

In our early years, Fair Indigo worked with several small-ish suppliers all over the world and in the US. We were country-agnostic. As long as you could produce quality products and pay and treat your workers well, we wanted to work with you. The universe of fair trade + clothing + quality was pretty small, however.

A new California startup has a novel idea to reduce waste and help families save money at the same time. It’s sort of a re-imagination of the hand-me-down kids clothing model many of us remember from our childhood.

Earth Day 2018 will “focus on fundamentally changing human attitude and behavior about plastics and catalyzing a significant reduction in plastic pollution” according to organizers at earthday.org.

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. It's a helpful little mantra for those trying to use and waste less. It's time to add a 4th R word - Repair.   Over the past...

Every returning trip strengthens relationships, widens smiles and drives us to continue working to make the clothing business a little kinder. Here are a couple highlights from their trip.

Our friends at Fashion Revolution will be exploring waste in the fashion industry in an upcoming e-zine. They’re calling it “Loved clothes last.” We’re so happy to see them focus on this often overlooked piece of the ethical clothing puzzle.

All of our Fair Indigo and Joobles products use Oeko-tex certified dyes – among the safest, most gentle commercial dyes available and free from Azo colourants, formaldehyde, pentachlorophenol, cadmium, and nickel, among other harmful chemicals.

This week is Fashion Revolution Week – a yearly campaign that started as a remembrance for the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh and has evolved into a global movement calling for greater transparency, sustainability and ethics in the fashion industry.

From time to time we like to review our manifesto to make sure it accurately reflects the values we set out to live by. Other than going back and forth on the Oxford comma, it has pretty much endured intact. We hope it rings true for what you’re looking for too.

The start of a new school year at Serapis School in Cajamarca, Peru brought a welcome surprise to students returning from break – a computer lab equipped with six computers, two printers and a projector!

Happily a growing number of people are turning away from “fast fashion” to the philosophy of “quality over quantity”and the sort of clothing we offer here.

Fair trade products are equitably created goods including a range of products from food to clothing. The focus tends to be on exports from developing countries to developed countries. In these countries, craftsmen, artisans, and producers work in safe and clean conditions, and for fair wages.

The area around Cajamarca, Peru is heart-stoppingly beautiful: majestic rocky mountains dotted with fertile patches of potato and corn fields and tidy dairy farms. We feel a special bond with ‘Peru’s Dairyland’ being from Wisconsin ourselves.

The Fair Indigo Foundation supports children’s education in communities where our products are made. The Foundation is funded by 5% of Fair Indigo profits and by $5 optional donations in our website shopping cart.