Have you ever stopped to think about how much cloth is wasted when items of clothing are made? When creating any item of clothing, you're bound to have offcuts - but what exactly is done with these offcuts?
Creating fabric to make items of clothing is energy intensive - especially when dealing with high quality garments. At Mullen & Mullen we're not fans of wastage - and so we came up with a great idea to ensure that we did our bit for sustainability and reduced the amount of waste that we produce.
Our bespoke shirt service is renowned - we create made to order shirts in beautiful cotton in a range of colours and patterns. We were left with piles and piles of offcuts of very high quality cotton in funny little shapes that were pretty hard to work with. We came up with the idea of making seriously luxurious boxer shorts from the offcuts to reduce our levels of wastage, with no two pairs the same... but found a problem. No British manufacturer would touch the project, as they would only work with one long piece of cotton that they could cut by machine.
Luckily, we were introduced to York-based dress maker and mum of two, Rachel. With a degree in textiles and 25 years of sewing experience, she was just what we were after - and loved our patterns! Rachel now makes all of Mullen & Mullen's handmade boxer shorts - which are labour intensive, but give us all the satisfaction of knowing that we're doing our bit for the environment.
Rachel cuts and sews every single pair by hand, meaning no energy is wasted through using machinery - it takes her an hour and a quarter per pair, but creates truly beautiful results. For us, it's more about waist than waste!