That soft fabric also happened to be sustainable and durable, and the T-shirts were made in America in factories paying fair wages. “No one really cared at first that we were an ethical brand,” says co-founder Linda Balti. “They bought our T-shirts because they were so soft and comfortable, though once they knew how they were made they loved our story."
Amour Vert—the name means green love in French—now has a line of dresses, tops, denim and more it sells online and in an expanding number of its own stores. All Amour Vert’s clothing is made using sustainable fabrics and non-toxic dyes, and the brand is committed to zero-waste manufacturing and fair wages. Amour Vert also partners with American Forests to plant a tree for each T-shirt it sells.
Balti grew up in Paris and trained as an engineer. She worked for a defense company for a time, but found the lab was not for her. Someone suggested she do VIP presentations for the company and at one of those meetings, she met Chirstoph Frehsee. Frehsee had founded MineWolf Systems, a company that cleared landmines, and after he sold it, he and Balti spent a year traveling around the world. While on that trip, Balti read a Newsweek article about ethical fashion that stunned her. “It was the first time I realized the impact fashion has on the environment,” says Balti. “It is the second most polluting industry in the world.”
The couple settled in the Bay Area, where Frehsee headed to Stanford to earn a joint degree of MBA/MSc in Environment and Resources. Balti began researching how fabric was made and what could be improved to lessen its harmful impact on the planet. Working with a fabric engineer, she developed a Tencel and Modal blend made from renewable eucalyptus and beech trees. Balti used the fabric to design a staple that was missing from the sustainable clothing lines she’d seen: a nautical-striped T-shirt.
The shirts caught the eye of Gywneth Paltrow, who soon collaborated with Amour Vert to sell shirts on her own site, goop. Orders from retailers including Nordstrom and Fred Segal came fast. The business was doing very well, but in time Balti wanted more. “We were a young brand but we had all the big stores,” she says. “The only frustration I had with a wholesale business model was that I could not tell the story of the fabrics and the brand.”
Balti and Frehsee, who became co-founder and CEO, reinvented the brand to sell directly to consumers as well. Balti designed a complete line, making items she wanted to wear herself, and worked with seamstresses and factories in California to manufacture the clothes. She worked to strike a balance between running an ethical company—including ensuring workers were paid a fair wage—and keeping prices reasonable. Much of the line is priced well under $200. And while most consumers looking for ethical clothing are willing to pay a little more for it, Balti’s ambition for Amour Vert is for a wide swath of consumers to wear it, and that means keeping the line affordable. “The more consumers who can buy our clothing, the greater the impact of our brand will be,” she says.
The shift from selling to big stores to selling online came with some challenges. “Ecommerce is much more capital intensive than wholesale,” Balti says. “The hardest part of a business like this is customer acquisition. There is so much noise, so many things claiming our attention that it can be hard to break through.” Nonetheless, the brand has grown without any formal public relations, relying on word of mouth and social media. It sends monthly catalogs to consumers, and Balti says careful targeting has helped make them a reliable source of revenue.
The company’s sweet spot is women from their late twenties to forties. “A lot of women become aware of organic clothing and sustainable fabrics after they start having children,” Balti says. “They want organics for their babies, and then they start looking at their own clothing choices. Even for me, I became more committed to this after I had my son. I don’t want any chemicals on his skin.”
Amour Vert now has about 70 employees, and Balti say hiring the right people to support the startup has been critical. “I want to surround myself with people who are not just inspired by the brand, but that I can learn from,” Balti says. “A lot of people know this industry better than I do.” A recent blast of funding will help Amour Vert add more store locations in the next few years, bringing Balti’s vision of an ethical clothing brand for every women closer to reality.
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