What Shapes It
4,000 Marine Species
are known to be affected by plastics, according to the World Ocean Assessment
14 billion bottles
REPREVE fibers have kept over 14 billion bottles out of the ocean
11.1 billion plastic
items entangled in the corals alone. In the past thirty years, we have lost up to 50 per cent of the world's corals
A Vision for a post plastic world
Biophilic wear made in harmony with the Earth. Let's usher in a post-plastic world. Every decision you make can be an empowered one
The Ocean Plastic Crisis • The Facts
More than 4,000 marine species are known to be affected by plastics, according tothe World Ocean Assessment. Without intervention, ocean plastic pollution could triple by 2040 - from roughly 11 million tonnes annually today to 29 million tonnes - with a cumulative 600 million tonnes of plastic in the ocean by midcentury. In a survey of 159 coral reefs across the Asia-Pacific region, researchers estimated 11.1 billion plastic items entangled in the corals alone. Plastic debris starves corals of vital oxygen and light, and releases toxins enabling bacteria and viruses to invade. In the past thirty years, we have lost up to 50 per cent of the world's corals. More than 914 marine species are known to become entangled in or ingest plastics. Seabirds have been found to develop plasticosis - a disease marked by scarring of the stomach lining due to plastic ingestion. Toxic chemicals and plastic particles bioaccumulate as they move up the food chain, concentrating in top predators like orcas - where they have been detected in fatty tissues and breastmilk. And it reaches us. Microplastics have been found in tap water, bottled water, and commonly consumed beverages including beer and salt. When we eat fish, we consume what the fish consumed. The plastic that enters the ocean comes back to us. We are all downstream of this. When humans consume seafood, they also consume plastic toxins, which can be linked to hormonal abnormalities and developmental problems. The good news is that the same material at the root of this crisis - the PET plastic bottle - is one of the most recyclable materials on Earth. And someone built a machine to turn it into thread.
REPREVE® • The Bottle becomes the fabric
REPREVE® is a 100% recycled polyester fiber made from post-consumer plastic water bottles by Unifi - a company based in Yadkinville, North Carolina. Plastic bottles are collected, shredded into flakes, converted into small pellets, melted, extruded, and spun into polyester yarn. By recycling over 30 billion water bottles into REPREVE, Unifi has saved enough energy to power over 280,000 homes for a year, provided yearly drinking water equivalent for 3.5 billion people, and eliminated the CO2 emissions from 1.8 billion barrels of oil. Each yard of Totem Twill, incorporates the equivalent of approximately 3–5 recycled plastic bottles. Every bag made in Totem Twill is a small act of ocean intervention - bottles that could have broken down into microplastics in a coral reef, converted into a tote that carries meaning, that carries environmental art, that lasts. To date, REPREVE fibers have kept over 14 billion bottles out of the ocean. We intend to add to that number.
ORGANIC COTTON · AS OLD AS AMERICA ITSELF
The other half of Totem Twill is US-grown organic cotton - the oldest cultivated fibre in the American agricultural tradition, grown without synthetic pesticides or fertilisers, in soil managed by farmers who understand that the land they work is the foundation of everything that comes from it. Cotton has been grown in the United States since the early colonial period - the first commercial crop established in Virginia in the 1600s, spreading across the South and into the Southwest over the following two centuries. Long before synthetic fibres existed, before petroleum-based textiles had a name, cotton was the American fabric. It clothed the country through every chapter of its history. Organic cotton returns to that foundation. Grown in conformity with organic agricultural standards, it produces no toxic runoff into waterways, builds rather than depletes soil health, and provides the farmer with a crop they can be proud of. It also produces the specific sensory quality that has made cotton irreplaceable for four hundred years of American textile history: a hand - the feel of the fabric - that is warm, breathable, immediate, and alive in the way that synthetic textiles never are. Cotton softens with washing rather than pilling. It accepts colour with depth and warmth. It moves with the body rather than against it. In Totem Twill, this organic cotton warmth is the foundation - the hand that makes fabric feel alive. A sensory pleasure. Tactile and reassuring. There is comfort in it. The REPREVE thread adds tensile strength, durability, and the satisfying drape of a refined twill construction. The two materials work together in a conversation that neither could sustain alone.
Non-toxic Waterless Printing • Color without cost
The conventional textile printing industry is one of the most chemically intensive manufacturing processes on Earth. Traditional wet printing uses enormous volumes of water, synthetic dyes, and chemical fixatives - the discharge from a single printing facility can contaminate a river system for miles downstream. The chromatherapy colorways of the Heidi Krauss Haus collection - blood orange, saffron, fig violet, turmeric gold, black lava salt - we do better. Totem Twill is printed using a non-toxic, waterless process. No water-intensive wet discharge. No chemical fixatives entering waterways. The color sits in the fabric with clarity and permanence, carrying the full depth of the original art - the totem animals, the sacred geometry, the colorway philosophy - with the fidelity that a truly original fabric deserves. The print process is as considered as the fabric itself.
THE VISION ·
A POST-PLASTIC WORLD
We envision a post-plastic world. A world in which the 8 million tonnes of plastic entering the ocean every year become, instead, the raw material for something useful, something beautiful, something that carries meaning rather than toxin into the living systems of the Earth. Every piece made in Totem Twill is a small movement toward that world. The plastic bottle that does not reach the coral reef. The organic field that does not leach synthetic chemistry into the groundwater. The print that does not discharge into the river. The garment that endures rather than ending in a landfill after two seasons. This fabric was made with the understanding that the choices we make in what we wear have consequences that extend far beyond the body that wears them - into the ocean, into the soil, into the bodies of every living thing that shares this planet with us. And that those consequences can, with the right materials and the right intention, be consequences we are proud of. This novel fabric endures.
Reclaimed in weave
held in pattern
preserved in meaning
held in pattern
preserved in meaning
