A quel point le lin est-il durable ? Et pourquoi nous aimons ce tissu

Son de Flor was born out of love for linen, timeless styles, and slow living.

As a small business we thrive to create long lasting products that are nature friendly and bring joy for our customers for many years to come.

We are working hard to drive a change towards more sustainable and long-lasting wardrobe choices in the fast-changing fashion industry. But you may be wondering how sustainable is linen?

Idea of Son de Flor was built on the belief in timeless and sustainable fashion that is friendly to time as the styles we create are classic and never out of fashion with minimalistic, elegant, shapes, cuts, and colors.

Since the styles we focus on are timeless, the garments become versatile in the context of your wardrobe. They are very easy to style and match with other clothes you already have.

One classic and versatile robe en lin fully produced locally with lots of care and love, that is special to you and can be worn for everyday wear as well as styled for different occasions such as office parties, birthday celebrations, weddings, family holidays and any other special day you might think of.

Moreover, when fully produced locally, vêtement en lin is constantly made sure to be created with everything that Son de Flor is about.

We have a wonderful possibility to ensure the quality of it ourselves and track the whole journey it goes from being a flax plant to a beautiful sustainable dress made from 100% natural linen that is ready to be worn. 

Why Is Linen Sustainable?

Linen in itself is a natural fiber made from the flax plant, which is a renewable resource that grows even in poor-quality soil and usually does not require any chemical pesticides.

Flax, the plant which linen is made, is also extremely versatile, as every part of the flax pants has traditionally been used to create a worthwhile product – nothing is wasted, and production is cost effective. Flax is resilient & can grow in poor soil.

According to the European Confederation of Linen & Hemp, ‘Across its lifecycle, a linen shirt used 6.4 liters of water’ compared to 2700 liters for a cotton shirt.

Unfortunately, fast fashion is still one of the most polluting industries in the World, doing harm to your Planet day by day.

Would you believe that on a yearly basis around 150 billion pieces of clothing are being produced and 30% of this amount is never even sold?

Or that when buying clothes from the fast fashion industry 50% of the clothing that we buy we usually dispose of within a year and the average piece of clothing lifespan in developed countries is around 3 years?

These are only a few facts about the unsustainable reality that is happening every day. This helps to imagine the amount of the waste that is being produced on our Planet and the huge landfills full of different waste, but also full of textile waste.

Knowing the fast fashion reality, we are concerned about the future of our Planet and lives of our children.

We value the natural fabrics that come from nature, especially lin as it is indeed a magical fabric due to many of its sustainable qualities, one of them being a fully biodegradable resource.

Non-biodegradable clothes, which are synthetic textiles, such as polyester, spandex, nylon & rayon, might take between 20 to 200 years to fully biodegrade. Linen in the meantime can decompose in as little as 2 weeks if it is all-natural.

As we have briefly mentioned before, almost no fertilizers are used in growing flax which is the plant used to make linen.

The production of linen fabric uses 5 to 20 times less water and energy than the production of cotton or man-made fibers.

Even more, during the growth process flax enriches and enhances rather than depletes the soil.

Linen vs. Cotton Sustainability

Due to the parallel arrangement of its fibers, linen is much stronger and sturdier than cotton.

The tensile strength of linen thread is twice as high as that of cotton and three times that of wool.

Due to its unique properties, linen undergoes a molecular change when wet and becomes stronger, resulting in greater longevity than cotton, for example.

Would you believe that to produce 1 kilogram of cotton 10 000 liters of water are needed?

So, 1 cotton T-shirt carries 2 000 liters of water needed for its production. Of course, this does not mean that we should throw all our cotton clothes through the window and never buy them again.

We look at this a bit differently as we believe that knowing this information helps to be mindful. If we own cotton garments, we should take a really good care of them, choose not to dispose of them whenever we think we won’t wear them anymore, but, for example, give them to someone who will.

Even though a cotton T-shirt might have cost you little money to buy, but for nature, this garment does carry a big price knowing how many resources were used to produce it.

Growth of linen, on the contrary, requires 5 to 20 times less water than cotton does, and it can be a wonderful alternative for a more sustainable wardrobe.

Another thing about linen garments, is the lifespan of them. Linen is known to be very durable and practical fabric, but did you know that it can last up to several decades to be perfect to wear while on average a cotton apparel can last up to 6-7 years.

You might think, sustainability aspect here is great, but how about the boredom of wearing the same items for so many years.

Here is where the timeless fashion statement comes again, as all of Son de Flor garments are created to be classic and elegant which is never out of fashion. And this way, you can easily wear your linen clothes paired with other garments from your wardrobe matching it wonderfully with the current fashion actualities in the World.

Sustainability For Son de Flor

Being biggest fans of linen, we are very grateful and happy to be able to work with this magical natural resource bringing the best qualities fabric can have.

We are proud to say our linen fabric and all the additional details needed for garment production – like yarns, buttons, zippers and the rest, as well as all the production houses our outsourced dresses are made at, are situated locally, in fact, in the same city as ourselves, which helps us minimize our carbon footprint from transportation significantly.

As we are focusing on timeless designs that are never out of fashion, at Son de Flor we do not have a problem of unnecessary waste.

All our linen garments are sooner or later shipped to their respective owners. Many styles at Son de Flor are made-by-demand, in order to manage resources in most effective way.

Since we are in close distance with all the parties involved in Son de Flor production process, we are happy to have control over the production process to reduce our waste to minimum.

We aim to minimize the waste that is left unused, by collaborating with other creatives who use our linen for smaller purposes.

Also, we are not using any plastic in our product packaging. In fact, your Son de Flor parcel will sometimes reach you in a pre-used box which is still serving its purpose perfectly well.

The manufacturing of textiles can be a complicated process, involving various treatments and chemicals which can be harmful to the environment, and people exposed to it.

Here at Son de Flor we are working with all the supplies that are Oeko-Tex certified, meaning they contain no harmful substances nor chemicals.

Pourquoi aimons-nous le lin ?

We love linen for a lot of benefits - being friendly to your skin, our Planet and our future. It is a wonderful fabric that grows in our lands naturally and with very little Planet resources and turns into beautiful garments that can be worn for decades.

The classic and versatile linen garment styles make it easy to wear them for any occasion and match them with other garments from your wardrobe.

Moreover, linen biodegrades back to the ground in the matter of a couple of weeks and returns back to the earth creating a beautiful cycle of life.

We truly believe and hope that in the future more and more people will know of the wonderful qualities of linen, which has been around in the world for thousands of years, and it would make us so happy to see this magical fabric to become a dear friend for even more people. 

We are kindly inviting you to hear our thoughts on sustainability and the power of timelessness in fashion field and we’d love to listen to your opinion in the comments under. We hope your cup of tea is ready, happy to spend next 15 minutes with you!