Palaver – about simple design, sustainable fashion

Suddenly they were there, nice images circling around on my Instagram feed, an intruiging logo and name, with color choices I liked and it made me curious, about this new so called slow fashion brand. Once launched it turned out Palaver created a small ready-to-wear collection, with thoughtful product design, refined aesthetics and sustainable conscious. Oh yes, ticking a lot of my beloved boxes here… So of course, I ended up buying one of my favorite wardrobe pieces, the jumpsuit! But what story is behind this brand? - Marissa

The girls behind this brand are Sydney born Aliska and Amsterdam born Cylia, they met each other through their husbands, the first one marrying a Dutch guy, the second one an Australian guy. They became good friends, but both ended up moving to the other side of the world. Secretly they both always wanted their own clothing label for a long time, but never thought they would be working together on something one day. They ventured out on their own, starting their own labels, but for both timing and people were not right and things didn’t work out.

After hours of talking, brainstorming they realized their vision and idea for something new matched perfectly and decided they wanted to start working on a new clothing label together as business partners.

From that moment on things really started falling into place again for them, funnily enough the right timing also coincided with both the girls falling pregnant at the same time.

Although circumstances made it seem impossible sometimes to work with each other, such as living on the other side of the world... the ball did start rolling and PALAVER was officially launched.

Personally, I can relate to their motto and common vision a lot. Triggered by personal experiences in both their lives they realized ‘having it all’ doesn’t necessarily mean what the world thinks it means, which is: having a successful career, social pressures and work equals happiness. Slow living taught us that ‘slow’ isn’t a bad thing, that taking your time and focusing on your own journey is much more valuable than anything else! (Although a long process sometimes ;)

With this mindset, they created a collection down to earth with just a few styles, true to their values.

PALAVER aims to create pieces that are not dictated by fast, short-lived trends- but are designed for long-lasting wear, season after season.

The styles they had in mind, needed to portray an effortless, elegant feel. Tops, dresses, bottoms and jumpsuits that can be suitable to wear to a picnic, to work or a party.

Aiming to leave as small an environmental footprint as possible, sustainability is a core value, working in smaller quantities with people they trust. The linen blend they used for the jumpsuits was specifically chosen because of the quality, weight and stretch of the fabric. Finding the right fabric, they wanted for the design, in combination with the right manufacturer they could trust, was and still is a big learning curve for them.

For example, even though manufacturers may have certain certifications it doesn’t necessarily mean their values always align exactly with your brand values.

The girls also had to do a lot of research to find a manufacturer they were satisfied with, a long process.

But with satisfying results in the end.

From this point on they would love to continue making their beautiful pieces, and promote a slow living lifestyle were possible. But the two priorities mentioned when I asked them what the plans or wishes for the future are?

Sustainability and giving back.

How? By continually thinking and developing design and production processes to make it more and more sustainable, ethical and transparent. They would love to, soon, reveal suppliers and manufacturers to us as customers for transparency and accountability’s sake. And as for giving back, an ultimate wish for PALAVER is to give back to this community, to sit down and chat with all kinds of women and support the dreams and wishes they have. Perhaps include them in our design process and create a program, so that they can give back to someone else and pay it forward with the funds they earn from the program.

Enough to look forward to.

If you are looking for that ultimate comfortable timeless jumpsuit, or another piece from PALAVER you can find them here along with some nice interviews under Journal.