Maggie Marilyn designer finds a more sustainable path

In search of a more sustainable future, designer Maggie Hewitt makes a radical overhaul of her New Zealand fashion business

Designer Maggie Hewitt of Maggie Marilyn. Photographer: Mark Leedom. Image supplied.

Last year, New Zealand designer Maggie Hewitt took 60 international flights to support the global business of her label Maggie Marilyn.

It’s a confronting number for anyone, but especially for someone whose aim from the beginning was to create a business with sustainability at its heart.

Then COVID hit.

“My life was travelling and living a very fast-paced life,” Ms Hewitt told The Australian. “This pandemic, we had a five-week lockdown in New Zealand. It gave me the time to think, if this happened to us in 10 years’ time, if we were five times the size, what would the challenges have been? The risks?”

That period of reflection accelerated the designer’s plans for a more radically sustainable business. This month, she has switched to a direct-to-consumer model, closing her last 20 global wholesale accounts, including e-commerce behemoth Net-a-Porter, which had picked up the brand in its first season in 2016.

This is just one of many changes to how she operates, which in total constitutes a radical rethink.

While she recognises that it has been those wholesale accounts – 75 at their peak – that brought her such a strong customer base around the world, she has seen their loyalty first-hand through the pandemic and felt “so much confidence” as a result to take action.

She says that, on the whole, the wholesalers have been “pretty understanding”.

“In all honesty it’s not often that a smaller brand says to a big retailer, ‘Hey, we’re going to go off and forge our own path that maybe doesn’t involve you’. It’s usually other way around, (they say), ‘This brand isn’t working for us or isn’t performing’.

“We’re a small business and I think we’re really able to pivot quite quickly, and some of these big businesses are 100-year-old businesses and they’re a big ship to force correct.”

The global fashion industry has been grappling with a “broken” system that involves both human and environmental issues in its supply chain, including exploitation of workers, overconsumption of fast fashion and an increasingly disposable culture.

All of this has been highlighted during this year’s pandemic, but while there has been much talk from some of the larger brands about the need to make changes within the industry, it doesn’t appear to be happening at any pace due to its entwined nature and its traditional schedules.

She says that being a smaller player allows her the nimbleness to take control of all of these things in a short time frame.

She has also performed an inventory reversal of her two collection lines. The brand is known for its feminine and fashion-forward styles, which Hewitt calls her “Forever” pieces, in line with global seasonal collections. This has traditionally made up the bulk of her offerings.

Last year she introduced a line dubbed “Somewhere”, considered more evergreen essentials.

In her new business model, the Forever pieces will now be just 5 per cent of her offering, with Somewhere making up 95 per cent. The shift was so that she could source enough organic and traceable fabric in her supply chain to make it viable for suppliers. There is also the view to make the Somewhere collection both recyclable or compostable at end of life, and as such become a truly circular business model.

“So much of building a sustainable business is shifting our mindset to taking responsibility for the full life cycle of your garment,” Ms Hewitt said.

“It’s not just how can we create a product with low environmental impact, then it’s not our problem.”

Going forward, the brand will never go on sale. This is another issue within the broader industry, with retailers reducing prices when they choose, forcing brands to follow suit with constant markdowns.

Ms Hewitt has celebrated her new approach with a new “Home” — her first store, in Auckland. Her plan is to eventually open similar retail outlets globally, with her eyes set on Australia next year “as the world starts to reopen”.

She says that despite her brand’s size, it can still have an impact on the fashion industry. “We talk about influence a lot as a business,” she said. “There’s a huge power in influencing other brands, to inspire them to come on this journey with us. Huge societal shifts throughout history have started at grassroots level.

“We just feel that for the first time in four years we are fully in charge of our destiny.”