Ethical Fashion Blog

Comfortable. Stylish. Versatile. Well-made.

These are the words of Adin from Chetopian Family, describing our Summerfest dress in the houses print as she styles it SIX ways. In addition to her being a fan of the dress, I also want to introduce her as a supporter of fair trade!

If you are fashionably conscious (or consciously fashionable), then we have good news for you! Some of you might have noticed the new PETA-Approved Vegan logo on the righthand side of Mata’s blog page. We proudly display this logo because 100% of our clothing is vegan, as well as a good portion of our jewelry.

Meet Sara, the sweet fashionista over at the blog, Swing the Day Away. When we say sweet, we mean it! Hands down, Sara’s got sweet style, and not only that, she loves to bake, sharing her recipes on the blog, as well.

Hey, we need your help! We’re getting ready to place orders with our co-ops for the Spring ’15 collection, which means deciding which styles move forward into production. We’ve worked hard for over a year now to develop the collection and we’ve got a lot of great prints and cuts. But we need objective opinions to help weed out the duds and identify the standouts. No lengthy discussions here; the new collection will be hung around the room, and participants will rate each style.

What do Mata Traders and West Elm have in common? Our good friend and fair trade advocate Jenny Gootman! We met Jenny through her previous position as the Executive Director for Global Goods Partners; she has been a part of the fair trade community for quite a while now. Nowadays, Jenny works as the Director of Social Consciousness and Innovation at West Elm. We think she’s a rockstar, so we interviewed her about her current position and her thoughts on fair trade.

Meet Leah! She took a fashionable stroll in our Isle of Skye maxi in navy & pink, styling the dress three different ways! Leah’s also wearing our Quill earrings, which are super fun to wear with a casual outfit or even for a night out.

When planning our nuptials, we knew we wanted something small and personal. And since we decided to have the wedding at my in-laws’ Montana home, the small part was taken care of – the guest list could only get to 60 in order for everyone to fit on the patio and eat dinner (that’s 30 a piece for each of our families – yikes!). I also wanted to incorporate as many fair trade elements as I could, starting with the dress.

Hi, all. You might have heard by now, but we’ve ventured up to the land of milk and beer. We’ll be at Summerfest in Milwaukee for the next almost-week, and we’d love to see you!

As any fair trader knows, running a business like this is hard work! There are Skype calls, sketching, stacking, packing, the list goes on and on. At times you get so caught up in the day to day that you lose sight of the big picture, and with all of this moving and planning going on, things got a little hectic. We realized we’d been our new office for two months and there was no evidence of what we stand for in the space itself. Yes, our products are here, and yes, we’ve got some photos up, but what about the umbrella of our mission as a whole? What does fair trade mean, and how can we be reminded of it daily?

We thought this would be kinda fun…

It’s spring! We’ve all been working a lot! Time for a vacation.

I took a week off and jetted to Norway and the Netherlands, overly excited to bring some pieces from our new collection to explore unfamiliar cities and towns in style.

Hi everyone! Today we’ve got Lindsay from Lee La La styling our Printed Peplum skirt for a summer outing. This skirt is a great way to fancy up a simple black tee, as you can see. In fact, with such a bright, bold print, pairing it with more basic or subdued pieces is a good way to go. Lindsay looks super polished with nude pumps and a leather tote, but at the same time, the skirt is saying, “Girls just want to have fun!”