Macarons : what it means to be Eco-conscious

Avant-garde and Eco-Couture brand Macarons from Germany was at Pitti Bimbo and Playtime Paris earlier this year. This beautiful collection is organic, and based on fair trade principles. We asked Julie Carol Kohlhoff, owner of the brand, to explain her deep beliefs and what it really mean to be eco-conscious.

It is not rare to see brands attaching words to their brands just to surf on a trend. Today, the mention “Ecological, Organic, Fair Trade” is surely a way to attract consumers through “greenwashing”. But for a majority of brands, it is something deeply rooted in their culture, a way of interacting with the world.

Julie Carol Kohlhoff is one of the truly convinced ones, almost an eco-warriors, helping spreading the word, helping understanding what the meaning behind the words. She wrote a long text, but her words are so interesting and convincing that I decide to publish it all. I hope it will be an eye opener.

“We frankly see it as our duty as a young company to show a different way of business ethics. Acting eco-conscious as a children’s fashion brand means taking responsibility and being transparent as a company and all that for our future – our children especially. We believe that the consumer today wants to know where the material used for the collections comes from, how it was made, who made it, and where it was made.

It is important to us to give them answers.

It is so frustrating to see how many luxury label do not care about work ethics at all. Thank god, organisations like Geenpeace work so hard in order to reveal the terrible misbehaving of those companies.

I have worked as product manager for the fast food fashion industry before founding macarons with my husband and I have seen lots of production in Asia, especially China and Bangladesh.

I can only tell you that I am so glad that organizations like Greenpeace and the CCC reveal now what is really happening and that it is not only the one’s like Primark or H&M who are to be blamed for their working ethics.

I suggest you have a look at “A little story about a fashionable lie” published on the Greenpeace website (click on the link here) to better understand what I mean. And I can tell you- this is the truth!

So, what we can do is to put those companies under pressure. We don’t say that companies should not produce in those countries anymore, no, it is important to keep up the industry there otherwise millions of people would loose their jobs- it is just important to do it right!

Mahatma Gandhi once said: ” Be the change you want to see in the world” and this is our biggest source of inspiration.

This is why we decided to control the whole life cycle of our products and start off by buying the best organic GOTS certified yarns we can find. We do all the knitting and weaving processes ourselves with our expert partners in Germany and Switzerland and manufacture the entire collection in Germany in impeccably managed small ateliers. All this is very complex and costly. But for us this is the definition of luxury. macarons is a luxury brand and we want people to understand our definition of luxury.You know, it is hard to find special fabrics that are GOTS certified. It is all pretty plain and boring. The worldwide choice of nice and special organic fabrics has to grow in the next years, so that fashion companies and designers can use those instead of ordinary ones.

We decided to create our own fabrics- I think that makes our position in the children’s fashion industry pretty outstanding. But of course it is a lot harder. The development of textiles is extremely intense, but so exciting at the same time. But not only in the textile development we work differently: every single button, yarn or fastener has to be selected in a way that it meets at least the Oeko-Tex standards, guaranteeing that it is fee of chemicals, for the buttons we have found a GOTS certified partner (one of the first ones).

We try to find all companies in Germany or Austria. We love to work together with small family businesses similar to what we are. It makes all the difference if the owners are committed! There is still a fine industry in Europe- you just have to find it and do a lot of research. It is all worth it. You see the difference in the final product. And we know 100% of what is in our clothes. For us this is future viability”.