It’s hard to deny that 2020 is the year of the sweatsuit. As the pandemic forced many into a routine work-from-home state, loungewear made its way as a regular wardrobe staple into even the most fashionable figures.

Yet as everyone took to share their perfect loungewear oufits on social media, one brand reigned supreme. Everyone from Tracee Ellis Ross to Hailey Bieber documented their bright sets from Pangaia, offered in a wide range of vivid hues.

However, don’t mistake this label for your typical fashion brand. A “materials science company,” Pangaia is a global fashion collective comprised of experts in their respective fields united by one shared mission: building a sustainable future. The label blends science, design, and technology into a line of everyday lifestyle products delivered direct-to-consumer. It’s clear the cause is greater than a marketing strategy – the brand offers a perspective of what a sustainable fashion company looks like. To learn more, we heard from founders of the collective about how they are working together to build Pangaia’s future.

Tell us about how you got started. How did the collective come together, and why did you decide to launch this label?

Jasmine Mullers, Chief Partnerships Officer: Our name PANGAIA is very meaningful – PAN means all-inclusive, uniting, and GAIA means Mother Earth. We function as a global collective of scientists, designers, thinkers, and creators from all backgrounds and walks of life.

Dr Amanda Parkes, Chief Innovations Officer: In 2015, the Climate Crisis reached the point of no return, directly threatening human existence and making it a geopolitical emergency. As a business, we are focused on Sustainable Development Goal #13 (Climate Action) for this exact reason. Our aim is to help people be a force for good. So every technology we work with is solving an environmental problem, and every product we design is created with the vision to make that technology available to the public and create a new norm. In everything we do science and material innovation are always our starting point.

Who are some of the core individuals involved with the collective?

Mullers: We connect the most brilliant scientific minds with designers from leading design schools from all over the globe to create products that marry cutting edge science and timeless beautiful design. Equally, we provide exciting opportunities to young people across the entire business – from our customer service agents to logistics and operations, we are building an inclusive company. It’s a new model of leadership that champions the team, as opposed to the individual. We believe the power of the collective is more effective than individuals working alone to make change happen.

What is your design philosophy?

Maria Srivastava, Chief Impact Officer: From the start, our idea was to bring materials innovations to life through products of everyday use. Our objective is to demystify science and showcase breakthroughs in the most accessible way possible. It’s always been a huge part of our DNA, it is one of the reasons why PANGAIA came to be, the realization that fashion was one of the top three most polluting industries and our belief that we could change that through materials science. Every technology/innovation that we work with not only solves an environmental problem but also strives to become planet positive (we will be ready to talk more about our initiatives around this more towards the end of the year!).

What makes the brand unique?

Dr. Parkes: We’re positioned at the intersection between design, material innovation, and environmental activism. Our overall brand philosophy is one of ‘high tech naturalism’ where the future of creating a sustainable fashion industry involves using existing natural materials, like agricultural waste, that are augmented by scientific and technological processes. We are working towards innovations in this realm, to bring an entirely new material library into commercial reality.

You champion the use of a number of innovative techniques and textiles. Can you shed some light on the design process? What does the R&D phase look like?

Dr Parkes: We have our own lab, where we develop our very own proprietary materials and technologies in-house, as well as work collaboratively with other lab startups to build on science developed to date. Let’s take the example of FLWRDWN™, one of the innovations we’re most proud of – a patented, hypoallergenic, warm, breathable and cruelty-free replacement for animal and petroleum-based synthetic down. This has been in development for over 10 years. Our patent covers the production method and this unique combination of flowers and biopolymer. It’s also the first time ever that an aerogel made of cellulose has been used in the process to increase thermal insulation properties.

So our design process is very much based on the innovations we’re developing – from there we create products that showcase these new materials while providing our customers with timeless garments they will hopefully be able to cherish for a long time.

Srivastava: We create products for a reason, not for a season. This philosophy has always been at the heart of PANGAIA — we hope to inspire people to be more conscious in their everyday choices and actions. In an effort to avoid overproduction, we produce based on demand. As a result, we significantly reduce our carbon footprint (as much as our customers’!) by only producing what we need to. Our limited drops are not really a sales model as such as much as it is a data-driven, sustainable approach to production, which we are constantly reviewing and improving on.

You’ve partnered with everyone from Jaden Smith to the United Nations. What makes someone the right fit for you to collaborate with?

Mullers: Our approach is to work with people, companies and institutions who share our values, passion for impact and vision of designing a better future together.

We had been in close contact with the JUST team for a while – we are completely aligned in terms of vision and mission. We operate in different sectors but we have the same goal of bringing people together around a shared value system. With this collaboration, we took the PANGAIA x JUST partnership to the next level, with the hope to highlight the importance of natural resources like water and raise awareness among both our communities of the necessity to protect and preserve them.

As for the United Nations, our holistic approach to impact and sustainability has been informed by the Sustainable Development Goals since day one— therefore, it made complete sense for us to create this collection celebrating the 5th anniversary of the SDGs and the 75th anniversary of the UN.

In what ways has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the business?

Maria Srivastava: We have been incredibly lucky to have been able to continue to grow our start-up in times of such deep uncertainty and remarkable societal change. From a consumer standpoint, the shift towards more selective and mindful consumption, coupled with the obvious move towards digital has been good to us and our D2C business model. We are now focused on developing several new product categories and developing new materials which we will be launching in the next few months.

The brand has received such an enormous response on social media. Were you surprised by this reaction and support?

Mullers: We are so humbled and overwhelmed by the support, and are so grateful to have such an engaged community, set on helping both people and the planet.

What’re your thoughts on the current state of the fashion industry, as it relates to sustainability? How can the industry improve?

Dr. Parkes: There’s a lot that needs to be done to make the fashion industry more responsible, both from an ethical and environmental standpoint – ranging from working conditions to moving away from materials harmful for the environment towards regenerative ones. At PANGAIA, we chose to work holistically towards designing a better future – while we are far from being perfect, our aim is to improve on all of these aspects simultaneously and set a new standard. We are also sharing our materials innovations and blueprints for impact with many industries to champion the adoption of more responsible production and consumption on a global scale.

As a brand that prioritizes sustainability, what does growth or expansion look like for you?

Srivastava: As a materials science company, we are constantly working towards improvement and always setting new goals for ourselves. We are working within a very ambitious impact framework (across both sustainability and philanthropy) that we have established and that includes aspects such as innovative materials, circular resources, ocean health, elevating human potential – to name a few. This framework is at the heart of everything we do and keeps us accountable.

What is your vision for the future of the collective?

Dr. Parkes: More and more materials science innovations – we can’t wait to show the world what we have been working on in our lab – from bio-based alternatives to cotton to totally new technologies like FLWRDWN.

Srivastava: We will also continue driving our impact-driven initiatives. We just launched the Tomorrow Tree Fund – the aim of the fund is to support grassroots NGOs around the world working on tree planting and conservation with the goal to plant, protect, and restore 1 million trees to help save our environment. This is just a small part of the many exciting projects we have in the making, so watch this space!

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