Day 3: Fashion Revolution Week - We're shining the light on our Flare Street Suppliers

Fashion Revolution Week is an annual #whomademyclothes campaign in April, the anniversary of the Rana Plaza factory collapse. This year marks the 5th year anniversary of the collapse. The campaign is used to encourage millions of people to ask brands ‘Who made my clothes’ and demand greater transparency in the fashion supply chain.

The last two days, we've chatted with the Designer & Founder, met the lovely team who make our flares and 
Day 3 of our blog series is all about our fabric suppliers and the supply chain!

Where are the Flare Street fabric suppliers and who are they?

Our suppliers are mainly based in Australia, though we do have some in USA as well as Italy. We work with local, independent or family run businesses.

By the time the garment reaches your legs, it has been inspected for quality all along with way – fabric makers, agents, our suppliers and finally us. We have close relationships with a lot of our suppliers, visiting them regularly or rushing in as soon as there’s a new drop!

We don’t compromise on the quality of our garments, and neither do our fantastic suppliers.

Where is the fabric from? Who originally manufactured it?

Flare Street has over 20 Australian based suppliers, who each specialise in different areas of fabrics and expertise – some velvet, some lycra, others have the best paisley prints! They each have agents or reps on the ground in various countries, for instance a lot of the highest quality velvet originates from South Korea, knits are great in Italy and USA is amazing at stretch fabrics. The respective agents and reps regularly visit the mills where the fiber is made, ensuring and confirming safe working conditions for their employees.

Most of the fabric that we work with originates in South Korea, Australia, USA or Italy. If we are working with Designer Ends, the country of origin can vary between Italy, China or Australia.

Flare Street Fabric

Why is my velvet pair of flares so lush?

We take a lot of time to source the best quality fabrics and we have found that the most luxe velvet is made in South Korea. The suppliers that we work with know this too, and so it is rare that we work with any other country of origin for our velvet! The colours really do vary from place to place, and so we have spent the best part of the last 4 years sourcing the prefect version of colours that we love – Deep Burgundy, Olive Green, Golden Mustard…

How do you find such unique, 60's/70's style fabric?

Each supplier of ours works with different agents, and therefore factories, and they maintain very close relationships. Some of them will offer exclusive designs and make limited edition fabric, to ensure exclusiveness for their customers (us!). This is why we’re able to end up with some pretty unique fabrics for our flares… It also means that once we’ve sold out, we can’t get that fabric again, making it very unique for the wearer!  

You mentioned Designer Ends… what is this?

To put it simply, it is the best way to recycle fabric.
Designer ends, otherwise know as dead stock fabric, is a rare gem and we get so, so excited when we come across it!

Originally made for a fashion house, it is passed on through for a variety of reasons (eg they over ordered, didn’t like some of the colours, it was a sample run). These fashion houses will sell it to our suppliers, who call us up and we rush in super excited and buy the whole lot!
Usually, the designs are beautiful and the fabric itself is remarkable, but it is also the best way to ensure this over-produced fabric doesn’t end up in landfill – instead it is given a second life and turned into a beautiful garment for our flare-lovers.

Oooh! Tell us what Designer Ends you’ve come across?

We work with fabric that was originally made by a lot of Australian designers, and also high-end Italian fashion houses. It means that our flares are made in very small, limited edition runs and also give us access to some of the worlds best fabrics as well as keeping it out of landfill.
We’re not going to mention where the next release of flares came from – let’s just say we’ve been collecting it for the best part of the last 2 years and you’ll just have to wait for the release... it’ll be very, very soon!
We can tell you that in our time, we’ve worked with fabrics originally produced by Prada, Fendi, Gucci and more!

The dream is to come across some deadstock fabric from Biba, Pucci or Ossie Clark!

 Flare Street Fabric

If you’d like to learn more, head to Our Ethos page here!
Tomorrow, we’ll be chatting about the Exclusive Designs that we produce, the artists behind the Flare Street pieces and the sustainable printers that we work with.

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