Well To Do

August Is National Wellness Month. And sustainable athleisure brand Wellicious has exactly what you need for it.

Also in this issue:

• Carita Redux

• Gwyneth: The Biography soars

• The first annual Dora Maar Film Festival in Provence

• Tiffany Does the Honors

• Mr. Cruise is not going to Washington

Wellicious Athleisure Wear.

Did you know that August is National Wellness Month?

The idea is to properly exhale during the dog days of summer and focus on self-care. It certainly makes more sense to do so in August than post-holidays in January, when you’re back at work and it’s dark and cold outside. August for me is all about being outdoors: hiking, biking, swimming, and yoga. Feeling good, getting strong.

But self-care isn’t just moving our body. We should also consider what we put on our body, be it sunscreen (essential!), clean beauty, or sustainable clothing. I have a several recommendations of products and items I use and love in The Style Files online shop.

One brand I adore is Wellicious, a sustainable atheisure brand founded in 2007 in London. Wellicious yoga and active wear isn’t only good-looking and ultra-comfortable; it’s also made from organic cotton, non-toxic dyes, and biodegradable elastane, the yarn that gives material its stretch. Conventional elastane is usually made from petroleum, and therefore not biodegradable and toxic for the environment.

So green-minded is Wellicious’s products that the company has earned the Gold Certification from Cradle to Cradle, the sustainability institute that promotes circularity in design. Cradle to Cradle, or C2C, is a design practice with circularity at its core—everything is created to be recycled, upcycled, or is non-toxic biodegradable at the end of its life—versus “cradle to grave,” the linear approach to design—make-use-toss—that was invented during the Industrial Revolution and has been the driving force for consumerism and pollution ever since. Throwaway culture, essentially.

In the fashion business, almost everything is cradle-to-grave with horrific consequences. As I note in my book Fashionopolis:

• The fashion industry produces more than 100 billion items a year; only one to two percent are recycled

• The average garment today is worn seven times before it is thrown away; in China, studies suggest it is three times

• The Ellen McArthur Foundation reports that the equivalent of a trash truck full of clothes is either burned or buried in a landfill every second of the day

The Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute was founded by architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart in 2010, inspired by their terrific bestseller, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. Cradle to Cradle’s Gold Certification process is rigorous, so when a brand or item earns the badge, you know it’s safe for the environment.

Here I’d like to mention Wellicious is offering my Substack subscribers a 10 percent discount. Simply go on the Wellicious website, and use the special code GREENDREAM when you order.

To understand more about Wellicious and its mission, I spoke with its founder Heike Petersen Cunza. Excerpts:

What made you want to start a responsible athleisure brand?

I was 27, and had just completed my MBA in Barcelona, and I did a lot of yoga. When I moved to London, I met up with my American friend, she said, ‘Why don’t you start a yoga apparel business ?” I had no fashion background, and no contacts in manufacturing. Zero. I learned by doing. I invested my savings, and grew the business. We were actually one of the first brands in this sector, with Lululemon and Sweaty Betty. And from the beginning we were very conscious about worker rights and the environment—not something that many fashion brands cared about back then.

Why did you?

Because when I went to China and I saw firsthand how the clothing is manufactured, how they treat their employees, how toxic the factory surroundings were. I said, ‘No, no, no, I’m not going to join this, I’m not going to go this way.”