Designed in the heart of Byron Bay by Madonna Bain, Eco Intimates is a bespoke intimates label dedicated to creating luxurious lingerie & sleepwear. Using natural and organic textiles, Eco Intimates is produced via slow manufacturing processes which support it’s makers & the planet.
Beginning in 2008, Madonna has always been passionate about designing and creating soft feminine lingerie that not only makes women feel beautiful, but will stand the test of time. Eco Intimates began in Madonna’s home studio while her two daughters were small, and each year has grown little by little through much love & dedication. Today Eco Intimates is still very much a bespoke label. Each collection includes both pieces custom made in Australia, & sustainably sized batches produced by a small team of home-makers in Bali, Indonesia. Still to this day, each & every design & pattern is lovingly created in the studio of Madonna’s Byron Bay home. With each new collection, Madonna remains true to her ethos of creating lingerie ’to remind women how truly beautiful they naturally are’.
Ethically produced
All our original collections are conceptualised, designed and sampled by Eco Intimates owner and founder Madonna Bain in her studio in the picturesque Byron Bay, on the northern coast of NSW, Australia. She is blessed to live in this idyllic holiday town, which is a hub for many creative businesses. The region is also known for it’s alternative lifestyle and this inspires her daily to follow her passion for design and for eco-fashion. All Eco Intimates designs are carefully considered to deliver style, fit and comfort for every woman and create a garment with the quality to last and be worn many times.
Production
Our pieces are hand crafted, not mass produced and countless hours are dedicated to refining the production so that the pieces all meet the highest stadards of quality assurance.
Most of our pieces are handmade in small quantities in Bali, Indonesia, while some pieces are still individually hand made in the studio in Byron Bay. With emphasis on high quality materials, we are able to create beautifully hand-crafted pieces that you can treasure and love!
As a business making relatively small quantities of product, we are small enough to manage the production personally. Founder and owner Madonna, works one-on-one with a local Balinese family production team, Ibu and Kadek.
The garments are sometimes assembled by seamstresses in their own homes, in their own time, which is a popular way in Bali, called home industry. This is not the cheapest way to produce, nor a way to produce large quantities, but it provides a flexible and ethical working conditions for the seamstresses, which we are happy to support.
We have therefore consciously chosen not to employ the bigger factories (that can make clothing for much cheaper) but choose a combination of small factory and home industry, as we beleive that this method better supports my emphasis on ethics, sustainability, quality and the importance of slow fashion.
Small quantities
One of the wonderful benefits working with other small businesses is the ability to have intricate quality pieces made in small quantities, which is hard to achieve with bigger factories. When we product our ranges in Bali, Madonna personally travels to oversee the process, taking her hand made patterns and samples to meet the tailor and get involved in the management of production, from bespoke screen printing her hand sourced fabrics, to overseeing the finishing of pieces to ensure the design meets her exacting standards.
Some of the fabrics and trims are brought from Australia (sourced locally or abroad) and some are directly sourced from suppliers locally, but all share the same qualities of natural, sustainable and high quality textiles.
Sustainability
Eco fabrics are the core of our brand, so of course we choose the best natural and eco-textiles to create our pieces. However, we also believe that it’s important to be selective about where we source our textiles from in order to enhance their sustainability credentials.
The fashion industry is fickle and inherently produces a lot of wastage. Therefore, as a boutique producer, we have developed strategies to use certain textiles which are surplus from larger producers’ production runs. Being a small scale producer means that unless you are ordering thousands of meters of fabric or trim, you have to use what is already available.
Therefore, in order to supply small runs, we purchase my trims from remnant suppliers and tailor the designs to suit the fabrics and lace that is available. The benefit of this is that you are using what is already been made, so it further reduces the carbon footprint of each garment. However, our quality standards for all materials are non-negotiable; we have minimum standards for our quality and eco-textile sources which we will always be firmly committed to!
Organic cotton
Our signature organic jersey is a GOTS certified organic cotton that is dyed or printed with low impact dyes (the best we have found so far). GOTS is a global organic textile standard and is an organisation to ensure the organic standard of textiles from raw materials and each manufacturer must adhere to the guidelines in order to have a licensed and certified GOTS textile.
This luxury organic eco-textile is the best we have found available, and we often get feedback about the softness and luxury feel of this gorgeous material that works so well for our intimate pieces!
Eco fabrics are the core of our brand, so of course we choose the best natural and eco-textiles to create our pieces. However, we also believe that it’s important to be selective about where we source our textiles from in order to enhance their sustainability credentials.
The fashion industry is fickle and inherently produces a lot of wastage. Therefore, as a boutique producer, we have developed strategies to use certain textiles which are surplus from larger producers’ production runs. Being a small scale producer means that unless you are ordering thousands of meters of fabric or trim, you have to use what is already available.
Therefore, in order to supply small runs, we purchase my trims from remnant suppliers and tailor the designs to suit the fabrics and lace that is available. The benefit of this is that you are using what is already been made, so it further reduces the carbon footprint of each garment. However, our quality standards for all materials are non-negotiable; we have minimum standards for our quality and eco-textile sources which we will always be firmly committed to!
Our signature organic jersey is a GOTS certified organic cotton that is dyed or printed with low impact dyes. GOTS is a global organic textile standard and is an organisation to ensure the organic standard of textiles from raw materials and each manufacturer must adhere to the guidelines in order to have a licensed and certified GOTS textile.
This luxury organic eco-textile is the best we have found available, and although the cost may be higher than equivalent conventional cotton, we believe that it’s a investment that is worth it!
We believe that caring for the world and the people we share it with is a life choice and the core of our vision for Eco Intimates, so therefore choosing organic cotton is big part of this choice to create a long lasting garment with less environmental impact.
