MATE The Label: Sustainable Fashion
MATE the Label is a sustainable fashion brand creating non-toxic, natural, and organic clothing for women, men, and kids.
About MATE the Label:
MATE the Label is “on a mission to clean up the fashion industry, one garment at a time”. Their mission is to provide people everywhere with essentials that are clean from seed to skin by upholding a strict list of restricted substances and by using organic materials and non-toxic dyes. The brand is also vegan-friendly and has eliminated plastic in its labels and packaging.
Female-Founded
The sustainable fashion company is female-founded. MATE is proud to be run by women and is focused on making products for all women. Kayti Carr, Founder & Creative Director, has a sociology degree from Loyola Marymount University. Before MATE the Label, Kayti ran a vintage clothing line called MATE Vintage.
Explore more sustainable brands and businesses in the directory.
Production/Manufacturing:
MATE the Label partners with socially and environmentally responsible factories. The cotton fibres for their materials are spun in India and their clothing is produced in Los Angeles and Peru. Their Los Angeles factories are located within 17 miles of headquarters, which reduces the brand’s carbon footprint. The proximity also allows team members to check in on a weekly basis. While their factories are not certified, they meet fair trade criteria and implement California labor laws. Read more on their factory and production policy, here and here.
Materials Used
The brand keeps its fabric portfolio organic, essential, ethical, and purposefully small to reduce the chemical burden born from clothing. They have committed to staying away from major synthetic fibers like polyester and nylon since 2018 and only use low-impact dyes.
MATE utilizes Organic Cotton, Flax Linen, TENCEL™ Lyocell, and have limited its Spandex use to 8% for any fabrication. The brand use organic cotton thread whenever possible and hope to exclusively use this thread in the near future. All the fabrics MATE the Label uses are vegan-friendly.
Sustainability Efforts:
MATE the Label lives by their Dress Clean™ mission because they think clothing should be a comfortable safe haven and not a place for harmful chemicals and micro plastics.
The MATE Eight
The MATE Eight are eight promises the brand makes that reflect its sustainable goals and vision of the company.
1. Clean – MATE seeks to uphold a strict list of restricted substances to ensure carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, and other toxins are kept out of its supply chain.
2. Essential – MATE aims to “create well-loved, well-worn pieces that stand the test of time.”
3. Organic – MATE believes “sourcing Organic improves the full lifecycle of [its] products—from farms, to garment workers, to customers, and back to the soil.”
4. Ethical – The brand aims to provide ethical environments for “everyone in [the] supply chain—farmers, garment workers, and recyclers—must be treated with respect, and must make responsible choices when it comes to carbon emissions, water use, and chemical use.”
5. Women- Centered – “MATE is focused on making products for all women—through every stage of life.”
6. Plastic-Free – MATE “eliminated all the plastic in [its] labels and packaging.” The company has also “developed MOVE by MATE which reduces its spandex use.”
7. Circular – Garment recycling options are offered, including collecting “all of the cutting scraps from [the] factories and incorporate them into new MATE products with the help of a mechanical fiber recycler.”
8. Certified – MATE is GOTS certified, amongst meeting other industry sustainability standards.
Sustainable Credentials
MATE the Label has been Certified Climate Neutral since 2021 and is a certified BCorporation. The company has been certified since April 2023 and their score is 84.4.
Their materials are GOTS certified organic and they use GOTS approved organic dyes.
Take Back Program
The reMATE program brings circularity to MATE’s community at large. This program offers fiber-to-fiber recycling for any used MATE garment. MATE has collected 1,000 garments since going live with reMATE in April 2022.
How does it work?
Customers return any MATE product and receive credit back to the brand for participating in the circular economy. MATE the Label’s recycling partner SuperCircle then sort, store, and aggregates the items with other brands in their network. Once they have collectively gathered enough garments, they can recycle the items and use the material to make new clothes.
Sustainable Milestones
The company has worked with their dye houses to transition to GOTS approved organic dyes. They have also instituted their own restricted substance list that is made up of 31 specific chemicals and 49 dyes that have been proven to be harmful to people and the environment.
MATS is Climate Neutral, since 2021 and has increased the amount of recycled material used. MATE has also reduced emissions from the disposal of used clothing currently in circulation, and examined the carbon intensity of any new products they produce, specifically looking at the proportion of how much they are emitting vs. earning on a piece.
In 2023, MATE the Label launched their C4 (California Cotton & Climate Coalition) collection. This project has encompassed many aspects of their mission: working directly with farmers to improve soil health and transition away from hazardous chemistry, building reliable domestic supply chains, and creating a product with 100% traceability and transparency. This collection is grown, dyed, and sewn in California – farm-forward, domestic, and traceable.
Currently Working Toward
Now that MATE has its initial certification finalized, they plan to utilize their BCorp score as a metric of progress and make plans to improve their score every year.
Research Commission
MATE the Label always wants to be doing better and they want to inspire the rest of the industry to do better as well. For their own improvement, they have commissioned 5 graduate researchers studying environmental science to perform a full chemical analysis of their entire supply chain. This research will help MATE identify where they can still be doing better and how they can address the chemical burden their clothes still hold.
This brand is also committed to Science Aligned Emissions Reductions Targets with Climate Neutral. These entail long-term emissions reduction targets that will impact every aspect of how they do business. The targets they committed to are a 50% reduction in scope 1 and 2 emissions and a 30% reduction in the average emissions per garment produced by 2030.
Part of their plans with Climate Neutral are to:
- Transition to a supplier that utilizes onsite renewable energy for energy-intensive aspects of apparel production such as yarn spinning, dyeing, and fabrication.
- Transition Hemp to Agraloop Biofibre across Knit apparel goods.
- Reduce the impact of their fiber sourcing for clothing by incorporating recycled cotton into their line.
A large component of being a sustainable fashion brands means being transparent, which includes traceability. MATE is working on a 100% traceable supply chain. Their new manufacturing partners in India allow them to improve supply chain visibility because they are vertically integrated and purchase cotton directly from farms. This is another step to ensure the brand is indeed the sustainable fashion company they desire and set out to be.
The brand also plans to explore new opportunities like allowing non-MATE items to be recycled through their reMATE program and allowing customers to resell their MATE.
Social Justice & Advocacy
Since 2020, MATE has donated $344,586 in the form of monetary and product donations. The MATE team also volunteers in their local community, planting trees and volunteering at composting facilities.
MATE the Label is working to bring the rest of the fashion industry along with them on their sustainable fashion journey. They launched their #ShowYourMaterials campaign over social media. This campaign encouraged brands large and small to transparently show what materials they used to make their product and list where they planned to make improvements. Through the help of their community, this campaign reached 1.7 million people and engaged 11 clothing, footwear, and home textile brands.
