Rapanui’s Eco Surf Wear Organic Tees
Written by Urban Sherp on July 8th, 2010
Who: Rapanui – Isle of Wight, UK
What: MCS Organic T-shirt
Where: Rapanui – £24.95 (approx. $37USD), in blue or charcoal
Why We Love It: We were psyched to learn about Rapanui, an eco-surf wear company founded in 2008 by brothers Rob and Martin Drake-Knight. We love their graphic designs, like this MCS t-shirt with a collection of marine animals swimming in unison to create silhouettes of sharks; we love that 50% of the proceeds of the sale of this t-shirt is donated to the Marine Conservation Society; but most of all we applaud the brothers for their transparency and for the role models they have become in transforming the clothing industry and the way that consumers think about clothing.
The brothers are true advocates for change in the clothing industry by adopting a more sustainable, socially and environmentally responsible business model. Each garment has a traceability record where consumers can follow the entire lifecycle of their garment from the fields to the factory to the shelves. So you can see that the MCS t-shirt, for example, is made of organic cotton grown on a plantation in India that is then transported by camel to a nearby Fair Wear Foundation audited, wind powered factory where it is made into jersey fabric and embroidered and then trucked off to the U.K. where it is printed with water-based inks and hand-finished. It’s so rare, and yet so important, to see and understand the road that our clothing travels.
