Our Values.
Fast fashion is like junk food: cheap, addictive and ultimately bad for you and the environment. It’s a love-hate relationship built on exploitation and fads to drive consumerism. Citizen Wolf exists instead to promote a healthier relationship with the clothes you wear, built around the three core values below.
Our vision is nothing less than shifting the global fashion industry away from mass-production to mass-tailoring.
Local is best.
You know food miles? Well the exact same thing applies in fashion and most of your clothes have criss-crossed the planet spewing unnecessary carbon in the process. This is clearly insane, so our story begins by building the shortest supply chain in the game and proudly playing our part in the renaissance of local manufacturing. Our core fabrics are knitted in Melbourne and every Citizen Wolf garment is cut and sewn in our Darlinghurst micro factory / shop where our staff are paid award wages or better.
Ethical is mandatory.
We source our fabrics from Ethical Clothing Australia (ECA) accredited mills which are regularly audited to ensure zero labour exploitation. We use organic cotton where we can and our merino wool is certified cruelty-free, sourced only from unmulesed sheep in Australia and NZ.
Zero Waste is non-negotiable.
Australia is the second largest consumer of textiles per capita in the world at 27 kg per year - double the global average (source: ABC News)
Sadly almost all of it ends up in landfill driven by our unhealthy love for fast-fashion. Worse, the majority of these textiles are blended non-biodegradable polyester which will pollute for centuries. That's why we never source petroleum derived yarns or blends and only use naturally biodegradable fibres such as cotton, wool, linen and hemp. Plus we source deadstock where we can, further reducing the amount of textile waste overall.
We also proudly build our garments to last, counting their lifespan in years not washes. We preshrink all fabric before cutting to guarantee our T-shirts are stable, because there's nothing more frustrating - nor more wasteful - than having something change shape after the first wash!
Because we make everything on demand there’s no unsold inventory going to landfill. Even still we produce hundreds of kg of cutting scraps every month which in any other factory would just get thrown out. Not here. We're en route to becoming a zero-waste company, and one of the biggest steps is upcycling our scrap jersey rather than sending it to landfill. Stay tuned for an amazing partnership with Seljak Brand launching later in the year.