Ethical and fair trade fashion with co-founder of Brookes Collective, Kate Heihn

06/11/2019 40 min
Ethical and fair trade fashion with co-founder of Brookes Collective, Kate Heihn

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Episode Synopsis


Brookes Collective was founded by two sisters living on different continents. Kate lives in a suburb of Dallas, Texas called Mckinney. Kimberly lives in a village close to Cape Town, South Africa called Muizenberg.



One day as they were talking on the phone, they began chatting about fashion; what fits well, where to find beautiful pieces, and most importantly: how could they ever afford a sustainable and ethically sourced closet?



The sisters decided it shouldn’t be this difficult to buy beautiful clothes while at the same time valuing human life. It should not have to be one or another. This is the point in the conversation where one sister suggested they figure out a way to do it themselves.



Links:Brookes Collective – websiteBrookes Collective – blogBrookes Collective – FacebookBrookes Collective – Instagram



Show Notes:



Transcript:Susan: Well, Kate, I am really just so excited you could join us today on the show. For those of our audience who are not familiar with Brookes Collective, I can’t believe they’re not because if I know about something that’s up and coming in fashion, then I just presume at this point, the whole world knows about it because I’m never at the forefront of fashion. But I do think I was lucky enough to meet a mutual friend of ours and she had on the jumpsuit, and I finally got one of my own and it is one of my favorite pieces. I absolutely love it. But before I just go on and on and on, I’m going to let you share your own story about Brookes Collective and about your sister who, unfortunately because this is a second recording of this podcast couldn’t be here today, and I’ll explain all of that to my audience later. But yeah, tell us a little bit about what’s going on at Brookes Collective. And tell us about a little bit about yourself and your sister and how all of this kind of came into being. Kate: Yeah. Oh, cool. Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be on here. Kimberly was so disappointed not to be able to make it work. But she is living in South Africa. And she is, she has been living in South Africa for the last 10 years. And it is a little tricky to do, to coordinate meetings sometimes. But Brookes Collective, we started about a year ago, maybe more like a year and a half ago when this concept of Brookes Collective started. Kimberly and I are super close. And like I said, she lives around the world from me, but thank goodness for technology, we’re able to talk all the time. And so we were just talking on the phone one day about fashion, just the normal stuff that we you know, what new styles are you into? What are you looking to buy this season, that kind of stuff. And we started talking about a pair of boots that were, you know, a little bit more expensive than—These were Kimberly looking into these—A little more expensive than she normally likes to buy. But she’s like, “You know what, but they’re quality made. I know they’re going to last. I know it’s from a company that’s fair trade.”And so we sort of started going down that rabbit trail of fair trade and what that means and what it looks like. And we realized, you know, we talked about fashion all the time. But what our conversations now are is to like, what kind of fashion is fair trade and what is quality? And it’s not so much about the sales and the cheapest thing we can buy and the fleeting fashion, but the classic pieces, and we both were kind of like, “Hey,

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