Meet the ‘Entreprenurses’ Behind a Clothing Line That Benefits Low-Income Families

Two nurses working in a neonatal intensive care unit have dubbed themselves “entreprenurses.”
To help the babies and their families at the Broward Health Medical Unit in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Amanda Dubin and Kelly Meyer started a baby clothing company that helps needy families. Luc&Lou donates a onesie to a needy family for each one they sell and also supports nonprofits that benefit low-income families with newborns.
The design feature the tiny footprints of a 29-week-old infant that Dubin and Meyer cared for in the NICU. On one of the onesies, the footprints form the yellow rays of a sun and on another, a purple butterfly. “We were giving back to these little babies, and we wanted to really do it on a larger scale,” Meyer tells the Sun Sentinel.
Dubin says that they were inspired by the fighting spirit of the preemies they care for. “If they can do what they do, we can do anything.”
Now, Luc&Lou onesies go home with every “welcome to the world” package the Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition of Broward County gives to low-income mothers of newborns. Sales from Luc&Lou products also benefit Fort Lauderdale’s Jack & Jill Children’s Center.
Meyer and Dubin have sold about 400 onesies so far and aim to expand. “We will always be nurses,” Dubin says. “That’s who we are. But we want to go bigger so we can help more people.”
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Do You Really Know Where Your Clothes Come From?

Check the tag on the back of your shirt. More likely than not, it will say Made in China, or if you are the kind of consumer who cares about supporting local business, maybe you will see Made in America. But don’t pat yourself on the back just yet, because those words may not carry that much weight.
Zady, an online retailer that targets conscious consumers, is launching a movement to establish a “Sourced In” tag for clothing brands sold in U.S.
“Transparency is the first step to taking responsibility,” Maxine Bedat, the cofounder of Zady, says in an email interview about her “We the People” petition to the White House. “What we can achieve if we band together is higher quality product, the lowest environmental impact, and clothing that we actually want to wear not just today but for years to come.”
Currently, companies can get away with claiming a product was made domestically even if only the final touches were done on U.S. soil. Zady and its partners — which include everyone from environmentalists and industry insiders to everyday people who support the revival of domestic manufacturing — believe the government must set a new standard. They are calling for new standards for clothing tags that would disclose which countries were involved in every step of the supply chain, from the farm to the factory.
Globalization blurs the lines of the already confusing Federal Trade Commission rules that govern what can be considered “Made in America.” The Zady petition plainly states that since the supply chain of supposedly American apparel happens in a range of countries not spelled out on our clothing tags, “the current mandate from the Federal Trade Commission to label products with ‘the country of origin’ simply will not do.”
In the 1960s, 95 percent of clothing worn in the U.S. was, in fact, made in America, but that number now stands at less than 5 percent. Bedat explains that those statistics, combined with eye-opening figures about industrial water pollution from the textile industry to chemicals in our clothing, make now the time to provide consumers with greater trust and confidence.
“As representatives of the U.S. consumer, the government needs to play its part and step in and regulate,” Bedat says, adding that the private sector (in particular, the fashion industry) must take responsibility for the consequences of their dirty supply chains. “Nonprofits can serve as watchdog groups shining light on the abuses in the industry. And finally all of us, as consumers can vote with our dollars for the values we believe in.”
Editors’ note: Maxine Bedat is a NationSwell Council member.

Watch What Happens When a Famous Musician Joins Forces With an Eco-Friendly Yarn Maker

Singer, songwriter, and music producer Pharrell Williams has been in the public eye a lot lately, from dancing alongside scantily-clad women in Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” video to lighting up social media with chatter about the unusual hats he wore to the Grammys and the Academy Awards. But now, he’s making fashion news for a completely different reason: Williams is collaborating with clothing maker G-Star RAW and Bionic Yarn, (a company that makes yarn from recycled plastic), to make jeans from ocean debris.
In an interview with Brian Clark Howard of National Geographic, Williams said of his environmental collaboration, “I am not a fanatic or a hard-core activist. I’m not the guy with the picket sign or the guy who lays down on tracks, but I commend them for their conviction. I have a lot to be thankful for, all of the cool things that have happened in my life. We have to give back in some shape and form and that’s giving back to the Earth. I’ve been lucky enough to be given this collaboration and my message to people is you don’t have to do anything. But if you don’t want to let it go, then what Bionic is doing with the oceans is right for you.”
Bionic Yarn works with marine debris organizations to acquire plastic bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (or PET) collected from coastlines. If the plastic has broken down after bobbing in the ocean for a long time, they blend it with land-based recycled bottles to ensure the material for their fabric is consistent.
The collection will be available at G-Star Raw stores and online starting August 15. By then, there will probably be a new Pharrell Williams hit saturating the airwaves, reminding everyone to check out these ocean-cleaning threads. 
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Happy Oceans! Happy Life! G-Star Raw and Bionic Yarn partner up with Parley for the Oceans. from parleyfortheoceans on Vimeo.

Why This Sportswear CEO Decided to Improve the Lives of His Factory Workers

Joe Bozich founded Knights Apparel in 2001, and grew it into the largest producer of college sportswear in the country. But one day he started to think about the lives of the workers who where manufacturing his company’s clothing. “Can you imagine what it would be like to know every night that your kids are going to bed hungry?” he told Fred de Sam Lazaro of the PBS NewsHour. “You can only afford one meal a day. I’ve had some experience that made me think about those things in my own life, including my own diagnosis with a disease called multiple sclerosis.”
So in 2010 Bozich started a factory called Alta Gracia in the Dominican Republic that pays its workers $3 an hour, triple the legal minimum wage in that country. In Bangladesh, another country with many garment factories, the government recently announced plans to raise the minimum wage from 19 cents to 34 cents an hour. The workers at Alta Gracia are safe and comfortable. The clothes produced in Alta Gracia feature tags with pictures of the factory workers, and a few words about them, such as “I can afford food, clean water, and medicine for my children when they’re sick because of your purchase of these clothes.”
Alta Gracia hasn’t yet turned a profit—Bozich isn’t raising the prices of his clothes even though they now cost more to produce. But he’s starting to build partnerships for large orders from groups that care about the origins of their clothing, such as 150,000 shirts the University of Notre Dame sells annually to raise money for needy students. With any luck, consumers will start to pay attention to those tags with the faces of humanely treated workers and choose them over another brand.
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This Grandmother Is Helping People with Down Syndrome Gain Confidence

There’s nothing like good clothes to inspire self-confidence. Karen Bowersox has witnessed this first-hand. As the founder of Downs Designs, a burgeoning business that creates garments tailored specifically for individuals with Down syndrome, the 65-year-old has seen the transformative effect that a pair of well-fitting pants can have on her customers. And most importantly, she sees how these clothes have positively affected her 9-year-old granddaughter, Maggie, who was born with Down syndrome. “When [people with Down syndrome] are forced to wear clothes from everyday stores, the clothing makes them look different. All you see is the Down syndrome,” Bowersox told The Huffington Post. “When they wear our pants and they fit and they look and feel more comfortable, they can be confident in themselves. You don’t see the Down syndrome anymore.”
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In 2010, Bowersox’s daughter, Michelle, lamented to her about how difficult it was to find clothes that fit Maggie. Bowersox went online, searching for garments that were created specifically with people with Downs. She came up empty-handed. Even though Bowersox had no experience in clothes, she couldn’t get this new business idea out of her head. So she hired a young designer named Jillian Jankovsky, and together they started Downs Designs. The company now offers 18 styles of jeans for men, women, teens and children, as well as long- and short-sleeved shirts, shorts and capris. The products are available to order using the company’s special sizing method, which they’ve dubbed “Down Sizing”. They also offer a try-on service to ensure that the clothes fit perfectly, as well as custom hemming for jeans. But what really makes the company stand out is their superior service. Bowersox personally calls every customer to review their orders, and if the products aren’t perfect, they can be easily returned, no questions asked. For her, Downs Designs is more than a business. It’s a labor of love.
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This Commonplace Item Went From Trash to Fashion

Did you know that recycled water bottles can be made into a beanie? Or a T-shirt? Or a winter coat? Repreve, an eco-conscious brand of yarn maker Unifi, turns used plastic water bottles and post-industrial waste into everyday clothing and accessories. According to its website, Repreve reclaimed more than 410 million bottles in the U.S. in 2012. Companies such as The North Face, Polartec and Ford use the brand. Who knew that used plastic bottles could be so fashionable?
Repreve recently returned as the official recycling sponsor of this year’s X Games Aspen, and will try to reduce the games’ environmental impact by turning more than 100,000 recycled plastic bottles into signs. The company shot a commercial (see above) with professional snowboarder Elena Hight and is inviting anyone to tweet, Facebook, Instagram or Vine with the hashtag #TurnItGreen about how you recycle or reuse materials and live more sustainably.
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