ColieCo: Sustainable Lingerie with Attitude

By ESTELLE PULESTON

In some ways, the sustainable lingerie landscape has come on leaps and bounds over the past decade, with eco-friendly underwear now easier to find than ever. According to the founder of Portugal-based label ColieCo, Nicole Neaber:

“it continues to be a very vanilla mainstream sustainable underwear market… It’s still really hard to think of any sizable sustainable fashion brand, regardless of specialization, which has really made a concerted effort to venture outside what you might call the ‘sustainable fashion safe space’.”

Through ColieCo, she aims to provide an alternative: lingerie that proves you don’t have to choose between feeling stylish and buying sustainable. Whether you’re in the market for a bold color-blocked set, a sexy open-backed panty or spanking skirt, or a vegan yet sustainable alternative to luxurious silk, ColieCo seems to have it all – and everything designed without losing sight of its central mission, to keep the environment fully at the heart of everything they do.

In fact, in January of this year, ColieCo was rated one of the world’s top 50 sustainable clothing brands by Good On You. Since we last featured the brand five years ago, it has also achieved SANE Standard certification for both its products and its Portugal studio, where every garment is sewn to order to eliminate the problem of surplus stock.

Materials include a mixture of recycled fiber fabrics, reclaimed deadstock, and natural, sustainably-processed fibers such as TENCEL™ Lyocell and a closed-loop processed bamboo satin with a hand-feel and breathability to rival silk. Even elastics are sourced from European OEKO-TEX STeP certified suppliers, and for prints, the brand turns to a local partner that offers zero-waste sublimation printing.

Optimized cutting processes dramatically reduce fabric wastage compared to mass manufacturing models, and the unavoidable remaining amounts are sent off for textile recycling to ensure nothing goes to landfill. Even at the customer’s end, Neaber provides ways to keep something from being thrown out if it doesn’t fit or gets damaged, by having introduced free alterations and repairs services.

Signature ColieCo styles that have remained in the collection or been reimagined over the years include the cutout-detailed Poppy set, ruffle-adorned Salema set, and ‘simple in the front, striking in the back’ Aster set.

The latest launch, the Kaleidoscope II range, is part of a wider collection of designs patchworked together from panels of contrasting color, which perfectly encapsulates both the brand’s commitment to minimizing fabric waste and its emphasis on a bold, fun, color-drenched design aesthetic.

“I think the Kaleidoscope collection just represents ColieCo really, really well,” says Neaber, “from the bold colorways, to the fact that the designs help us approach zero waste in the use of our mesh and TENCEL fabrics… From a creative perspective, it has also been nice for me to flex those muscles within a particular conceptual space, and pay tribute to some incredibly important female artists who maybe haven’t received quite as much credit as some of their male counterparts historically, like Sonia Delaunay.”

What’s more, ColieCo’s mission extends beyond style and sustainability to also include a commitment to accessibility. A few years back, the brand made a deliberate decision to eschew wholesale selling and the associated markups, in a bid to keep its pricing on par with mid-range mainstream brands while outperforming them on ethics, sustainability and quality.

Those prices start from just 20€ (approx. $22.50) for lingerie separates, going up to a very reasonable 152€ ($171) for the 5-piece Evie bralette, thong, leg harness and thigh garter duo set in premium ‘bamboo silk’. The size range spans XXS to 3XL as standard, with custom sizing also available.