Sustainability

Sustainability isn't a collection at Florimay. It's the set of decisions behind every collection — where our wool comes from, who weaves it, how we ship it, and how long it lasts on your shoulders. We don't think we've solved anything. We think we've made a thousand small, defensible choices, and we'd like to show our work.

What follows is a current account of how we operate, what we're still figuring out, and where we want to do better. We'll update this page as things change.

Materials: where the fiber comes from

Wool is the backbone of what we make. We source primarily from mulesing-free flocks in Tasmania and the South Island of New Zealand, with a smaller quantity of Merino from Uruguay for our lighter-weight knits. Every wool clip we buy is certified non-mulesed, and we request shearing records from the grower co-ops we work with.

Our cotton is GOTS-certified organic — grown without synthetic pesticides, processed without chlorine bleach or formaldehyde finishes. We use it for shirting, pocketing, and the inner linings of our outerwear.

Where it makes sense, we blend in recycled content. Our lined trousers use a 40% recycled cupro lining, and the polyester thread in our knitwear is recycled GRS-certified material. We don't pretend recycled polyester is a solution — it still sheds microfibers — so we use it sparingly and only where a natural alternative would fail the garment.

A few pieces contain mohair, alpaca, or silk. These we buy in small quantities from named farms and reelers we can describe by first name. The knitwear collection lists the specific farm or co-op on each product page.

Mills: long relationships, real visits

We work with a small number of mills, most of them for over five years now. Our wool is spun in Biella, Italy, and in Yorkshire, England. Our cotton shirting comes from a family-run weaver in Portugal. Our outerwear canvas is milled in Japan.

Two of us visit each mill at least once a year. Not for a photo op — to look at the dye house, talk to the floor supervisor, check that wastewater treatment is actually running, and place the next season's order face-to-face. When a mill can't show us something, we ask again. If they still can't, we stop working with them. This has happened twice.

We maintain a supplier list available on request to any customer, journalist, or researcher who emails us. We don't publish it openly because some of our partners ask us not to, but we have never refused a legitimate request.

Packaging: boring, recyclable, minimal

Orders ship in uncoated recycled cardboard boxes with paper tape. Inside, garments are wrapped in unbleached tissue and tied with cotton string — no polybags, no plastic clips, no "sustainable" plastic-adjacent materials pretending to be something else.

The one exception: delicate knitwear travels from our Portuguese knitter to our warehouse in recycled polybags, because we haven't found a paper alternative that survives ocean freight without condensation damage. We're testing glassine and waxed paper now. We'll update this when we've switched.

Labor and payment

Every mill and cut-and-sew partner we work with pays at or above the local living wage as calculated by the WageIndicator Foundation or equivalent regional benchmark. We verify this through direct conversation with floor staff during visits, not through self-reported audits alone.

We pay our suppliers on 30-day terms, and we hit them. During 2020 and 2022, when many brands canceled orders or pushed payment out 120+ days, we paid in full and on time. Our suppliers remember this. It's why they take our calls first.

Durability over disposability

The single most sustainable thing a garment can do is last. Our patterns are cut with seam allowances generous enough to let out or take in. We use full-canvas construction on tailoring, felled seams on shirting, and fully-fashioned shaping on knitwear — all of which take longer to make and survive longer in the wash.

We offer free repairs on anything we've made, for as long as we're in business. Read more about why we build this way in Why we still make full-canvas tailoring.

What we're still working on

We don't have a full scope 3 emissions measurement yet — we're working with an outside consultant on this for 2025. Our dye house in Portugal still uses some conventional reactive dyes; we're piloting plant-based alternatives on two shirting runs this year. And we don't yet take garments back for resale or recycling at end of life. That's the next project.

We'll publish an annual update each January with numbers, not adjectives.

Start with something built to last: the outerwear collection is a good place to begin.