The shop front
Grand opening Saturday 20th September 2014
10am to 5pm
Yes, there will be cake!
5a Church Street
Coggeshall, Essex
CO6 1TU
01376 564 117
Daf doing a spot of painting
We’ll post the progress as we go.
A coat of white paint
Can’t wait to open our doors so that you can all come and see and feel the clothes in person.
Some pieces of old furniture to be upcycled into something fabulous
An antique piece or two
We are ready to start production on our second collection. We have sampled the items and are so excited to share them with you. In order to fund the second collection, we are running a Kickstarter campaign.
Upon the successful completion of the campaign, we will be able to press go on our order. Our clothes take up to three months to produce, so that would mean that the next collection would be available at the end of the summer.
We have some beautiful new items, which we will be sharing with you over the coming weeks.
Please come and have a look at our Kickstarter page. We’d really love your support so that we can produce our next round of sustainable and ethically made clothes for kids. We’re on a mission to change the way that people buy clothes and we need your support.
If crowdfunding is new to you, then you should definitely check it out. It’s a really exciting way that creative businesses can fund their projects with the support of the public. Backers may come on board with a pledge for many reasons:
They may be friends or family offering a helping hand;
They could be colleagues who believe in the person looking for funding;
They can be people who share the interest in fashion and sustainability;
They could be looking for more great clothes for their kids;
They could simply like the look of what you’re doing and want to be able to say they backed you way back when;
Or, they could be backing you to get some of the rewards you are offering for different tiers of pledge.
Regardless of their reasons for coming on board, Kickstarter is an amazing and social way to raise money for your project. It’s worth coming to check it out and see how it works.
We would really appreciate your support and won’t let you down with our next collection! The designs are all really beautiful with the same attention to detail, durability, and style as the first collection. You won’t be disappointed.
Come and see us on Kickstarter.
Thanks for taking a look!
The SOURCE Brand Preview 2014 is a webinar presented by the Ethical Fashion Forum. It is a chance for ethically produced brands to showcase their collections, introduce themselves and tell the story of their companies. Media, buyers, students and members of the public are able to attend virtually using computers to interact with the brands’ representatives.
There are a series of one-hour webinars throughout the two day period, each one focussing on an area of ethical fashion, from prints to clothing and accessories (incl Kids Wear). A selection of ethical brands working in the specific field will be featured. See the full programme here.
The Fableists will be participating on Day 2: Wednesday 5 February from 17:30 to 18:30 GMT in the panel on Children, presented by Dhana EcoKids. Register here to listen and participate. You will hear all of the brands presented by the moderator and then Matt Cooper, founder of The Fableists will speak and answer a few questions. If you have questions, they will be referred to the presenter you wish to ask.
Visitors can register online and are given a unique URL so that they can listen in to the presentations and send questions.
If you work in fashion, this is a must to find out which brands are working ethically. As a member of the public, you can get a great idea of the fashion that is out there that is made to a high ethical standard.
The Ethical Fashion Forum says:
SOURCE Brand Preview uses a powerful meeting platform to connect you with the brands and designers exhibiting in your chosen categories. Connect directly with inspirational entrepreneurs, founders and designers from the world’s most pioneering brands, gain a visual introduction to products, get your questions answered and update on latest innovation in sustainable fashion. We run SOURCE Brand Preview in association with SOURCE Founding Partners: brands, suppliers and organisations who are pioneering best practice across the fashion industry supply chain.
Greenpeace’s ‘Little Monsters’ Image © Greenpeace
Don’t believe us? Greenpeace has just released a report that shows shockingly hazardous levels of toxins in clothes made for kids. The clothes tested came from fast fashion brands, such as American Apparel, C&A, Disney, GAP, H&M, Primark, and Uniqlo; sportswear brands, such as adidas, LiNing, Nike, and Puma; and the luxury brand Burberry. They were also manufactured in twelve different countries. 
This is pretty alarming stuff. Not only are these chemicals in the clothes worn by our children, they are also being handled by the workers in the garment trade all over the world. What’s more, these chemicals could be let loose in the environment, harming the natural world and local communities.
Read more about how these chemicals can affect your child here.
Read the Daily Mail’s coverage of this report.
Western Shirt and Gregori Saavedra’s ‘You are What you Wear’ T-Shirt
The sustainability of The Fableists’ clothing is one of our top considerations in designing and making the clothes. The other is how the clothes will look. While The Fableists put a huge emphasis on environmental, social and ethical considerations, we also want the little punks in our tribe to look sharp! Sustainable style has to transcend the whims of fashion, so our classic and clean tailoring is versatile.
Steve Scott’s ‘Rocking Bird’ T-Shirt
The majority of our clothes are made to suit both boys and girls, to be worn throughout the year and to be ideal for any number of occasions…all the while looking cool and being practical from a parenting standpoint. They are tough, well made, meant to pass on when outgrown and easy to care for. After all, how many tucks, creases, pleats and ruffles can one person iron in a lifetime?
Smock Top
You might choose our clothes because they are ethically made with materials that don’t cost the Earth but you can also choose our clothes based on looks alone. We want to change the way that we buy clothes, one design at a time.
Chore Coat and Classic Straight Cut Jeans
From the Oxford English Dictionary
The Fableists is first and foremost about designing cool, vintage-inspired clobber for kids. Our clothes are imbued with a rebellious ‘dare to think different’ attitude and we want our tribe of little punks to challenge some of the ills in the fashion world.
Living as sustainably as possible just makes good sense. But can fashion be sustainable? The Fableists believe that it can be and it certainly can be better than it is currently. The Fableists is a business but we want our company to have a positive impact and combine social responsibility and care for the environment. At the same time, we don’t want you to give up personal style in order to buy well, so we offer you great clothes that don’t cost the Earth and her inhabitants.
Today, there are countless certifying bodies who evaluate all aspects of your business in order to award you certain accreditation. These vary by region and a number of them evaluate to a global standard. These are all a huge, positive step towards a more sustainable world. The fact that so many people now recognise what a Fair Trade label (for instance) means on their clothes or food is a massive change from how consumers shopped a decade ago.
Many clothing companies describe their clothes as ‘fairly traded’, ‘ethical’, or ‘eco’ and have the certification to back it up. We have chosen to use ‘sustainable’ to describe The Fableists because we feel it covers all of these areas. Therefore, the certification that is the most important to us, is the Global Organic Textile Standard, or GOTS. GOTS is the “world’s leading textile processing standard for organic fibres, including ecological and social criteria, backed by independent certification of the entire textile supply chain.” So, they evaluate the entire process from fibre production to processing and manufacturing to ensure that textiles remain ‘organic’ throughout. At the same time, they have a minimum of environmental and social criteria that must be met. This covers everything from chemicals and their toxicity and biodegradability through the entire supply chain, to maintaining the implementation of key criteria on labour set out by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). This certifies that the factories we are using do not use child or forced labour, that employees have safe and hygienic work environment, freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, living wages are paid and more.
We hope this information is helpful. Please do contact us with comments or feedback.
TheFableists 