FASHION REVOLUTION WEEKWho Made Your Clothes
This year for Fashion Revolution Week, we thought we'd take you around our two factories with us, to meet our team of talented garment workers who make our Palava dreams a reality.
LONDON FACTORY
This is Gagan, she's a part-time student and expert machinist. Before we interrupted her to take this lovely photo, Gagan was hard at work making our Francesca Blue Cave jumpsuits (which is looking very lovely, we might add!). Do you recognise the print on Gagan's apron? It's made from scraps of the Gooseberry print tencel from last season's collection.
Here we have Kumar at the pressing station, where all our dresses are steamed and pressed - no crumpled dresses for us! Often Kumar is hidden in a big cloud of steam but whenever he emerges, he always has a big smile for us as we make our way through the factory.
When production starts, we give the factory a sample of every item we're making - that way the machinists have something physical to follow (alongside a paper tech pack full of notes and illustrations). Here we have a sample of our new Cyd dress in the Chillies print.
If there are any changes to be made to an original sample, they will be noted and pinned on the dress in bright, unmissable post-it notes.
The cutting table is where a lot of the magic happens. Our printed fabric arrives on big rolls which get laid out on this huge, long table. Cutting is a bit of an art - cutting the right quantity with as little wastage as possible can be a bit of a puzzle.
(Note another Palava print DIY apron made from fabric scraps!)
TURKEY FACTORY
Our Turkish factory produces all of our Organic Cotton knitwear. The cotton is grown, processed and spun all to organic standards. Using Oeko-Tex certified dyes the fibres are dyed to our specific colour requirements.
All of the workers in our Turkish factory are paid at least minimum wage, as is the law in Turkey. They get annual leave and also receive a free lunch everyday at the factory.
Here is one of our fox jumpers emerging from one of the knitting machines. You can see all of the different coloured yarns involved on top of the machine. Looks like the blue is running a little low!
Another thing our factory does to help its workers is to provide a shuttle bus to and from work for them. This is both better for the environment (fewer cars on the road) and also saves the cost of a commute for employees.
On some National holidays as a treat, the workers are given food boxes full of treats as an extra bonus. We might have a word with big boss Bryony at Palava's London HQ as this sounds like a perk we should get on board with!
For more information about our ethics and production methods, click here to visit our Sustainability page.
