King Louie

King Lou­ie is a brand that often does things a litt­le dif­fer­ent­ly to other brands and has its own distinc­ti­ve style. Colourful, opti­mi­stic and never mono­to­no­us becau­se of their love for uni­que prints.

King Lou­ie clo­thes allow you to be retro, modern and roman­tic, all at the same time. Won­de­ring what else the brand has to offer? Then keep reading. 

Ann Ber­lips and Geor­ge Cra­mer star­ted their shop in Ams­ter­dam in 1981. At first, they sold vin­ta­ge beau­ties and then three years later, they released their first item of clot­hing under the name of King Lou­ie. It has sin­ce grown into a well-known and sus­tainable clot­hing brand for women!

Ethical

Fair pro­duc­tion is of utmost importance to King Lou­ie. That’s why the brand only works with manu­fac­tu­r­ers that meet their requi­re­ments. 30% of pro­duc­tion takes place in Chi­na and 70% in Tur­key. The lat­ter coun­try is home to their main sup­pli­er. The owner of this com­pa­ny, Mrs Nur Ger, is stron­gly com­mit­ted to equal women’s rights in the world. In 2012, the com­pa­ny was even award­ed: Best Social Gen­der Equa­li­ty in Work Life. A year later, it was included on the Hono­ra­ry List by United Nati­ons Women Empower­ment Prin­ci­ples and in 2016, Mrs. Nur Ger was appoin­ted their Glo­bal Busi­ness Advo­ca­te. If tha­t’s not a good part­ner­ship! Dutch-Tur­ki­sh com­pa­ny Orimpex sup­pli­es the sus­tainable jer­sey fabric. 

King Lou­ie has been a mem­ber of the Fair Wear Foun­da­ti­on (FWF) sin­ce 2015 in the cate­go­ry ​“good” with a score of 58. The FWF veri­fies the brand and its fac­to­ries ful­fil cer­tain requi­re­ments every year and issues a report to impro­ve working con­di­ti­ons each time. 

All of their manu­fac­tu­r­ers are in Tur­key or Chi­na, and most of their other sup­pli­ers are smal­ler com­pa­nies (26−50 employees). 90% of the manu­fac­tu­r­ers King Lou­ie works with are con­ti­nuous­ly audi­ted by the FWF or the Busi­ness Social Com­pli­ance Initia­ti­ve (BSCI). This allows King Lou­ie to keep (inde­pen­dent) eye on working conditions.

Materials

In recent years, King Lou­ie has been making huge efforts to use sus­tainable mate­ri­als. For ins­tance, by 2021, 50% of the coll­ec­tion was alre­a­dy made out of eco-fri­end­ly fabrics, such as Ten­cel, Eco­vero vis­co­se and orga­nic cot­ton. By 2021, 75% of all the cot­ton they used, in their den­im pro­ducts among others, was Glo­bal Orga­nic Tex­ti­le Stan­dard (GOTS) cer­ti­fied orga­nic, which you will find in the den­im pro­ducts. A nice bonus is that in addi­ti­on to envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards, the GOTS label also includes working con­di­ti­ons in its cer­ti­fi­ca­ti­on. The brand recent­ly star­ted using recy­cled poly­es­ter and nylon, Fen­c’s Top­green fib­re and Acepora-Eco.

In 2022, for the first time, King Lou­ie will launch pro­ducts made enti­re­ly from post-con­su­mer recy­cled King Lou­ie items.

King Lou­ie also com­pli­es with REACH and POP legis­la­ti­on. The­se Euro­pean regu­la­ti­ons impo­se limits which com­pa­nies must com­ply with regar­ding the use of che­mi­cals. The result of this is the Rest­ric­ted Sub­s­tances List (RSL). King Lou­ie sub­mits this list to all their manu­fac­tu­r­ers. The brand also works a lot with Oeko-Tex cer­ti­fied sup­pli­ers. This means that no che­mi­cals are used in pro­duc­tion and that none remain in the pro­ducts. The inde­pen­dent agen­cy VERI­TAS regu­lar­ly checks their sup­pli­ers to see if they’re still mee­ting the RSL requirements.

Circular economy

King Lou­ie signed the Ams­ter­dam Green Deal Cir­cu­lar Tex­ti­le agree­ment in 2021 and par­ti­ci­pa­ted in the Inno­va­ti­on Lab tog­e­ther with other sus­tainable fashion pioneers.

In addi­ti­on, King Lou­ie is also working on its own cir­cu­lar pro­jects such as intro­du­cing a coll­ec­tion made out of worn King Lou­ie items. Lef­to­ver fabrics from the coll­ec­tions are also reu­sed to make ​‘rene­wed’ garm­ents. The brand also encou­ra­ges reu­se and clo­thes swap­ping or bor­ro­wing with care tips, its own swap rack in its shop and col­la­bo­ra­tes with a clo­thes ren­tal shop. 

Mono mate­ri­al clo­thes (made out of 100% cot­ton, for exam­p­le) are the most recy­clable and, in the case of 100% natu­ral fibres, even biode­gra­da­ble. Howe­ver, King Lou­ie also uses tex­ti­le blends for part of its coll­ec­tion, for exam­p­le cot­ton mixed with elas­t­a­ne to pro­mo­te com­fort. The­se pie­ces are less easy to recy­cle and not ful­ly biodegradable.

Animal welfare

Only a small part of King Lou­ie’s coll­ec­tion fea­tures ani­mal mate­ri­als such as wool, mohair, silk and lea­ther.

The lea­ther used is a by-pro­duct of the meat indus­try and King Lou­ie wants to limit the use of lea­ther in their coll­ec­tions, curr­ent­ly only 0.05% of the SS22 coll­ec­tion is made from this mate­ri­al. The manu­fac­tu­r­ers who pro­cess the hides for lea­ther are all mem­bers of the Lea­ther Working Group (LWG), an orga­ni­sa­ti­on that aims to impro­ve the envi­ron­men­tal impact (in terms of che­mi­cals and ener­gy con­sump­ti­on, for ins­tance) of the lea­ther indus­try by moni­to­ring and cer­ti­fy­ing lea­ther manufacturers.

Too litt­le infor­ma­ti­on is known to assess the con­di­ti­ons of the wool and silk production.

King Lou­ie offers com­for­ta­ble retro clot­hing for women with a sen­se of romance. See below whe­re you can find this modern brand with a vin­ta­ge twist near you!