A Favourite Fashion Brand

HARA the label

Australia-based fashion brand Hara the label was founded in 2016 by Allie Cameron after facing the heartbreaking realities of the fast-fashion industry during her time in India. Hara was created with a vision for fashion to do good, with a mission to ‘empower lives, rejuvenate the earth and bring change, awareness and education to the fickle fashion industry’, and it is through this mission and dedication to it that Cameron has built up her brand and the community within it.

Hara is a special brand to me because it embodies more than just clothes, it’s about the people who wear them, the people who make them and the planet they’re made on. It’s easy to see that this isn’t just a brand to whom sustainability and social responsibility is just a PR stunt, it’s in their DNA. Every step within their design process and supply chain is carefully thought out to result in the least damaging effect possible to the environment; proving to fashion brands everywhere that even though sustainability is hard, it is not impossible and, with a little TLC, steps can be made towards better sustainability initiatives.

One thing that’s unique about Hara is that most of their clothes are made from bamboo fiber. Everything from the buttery soft fabric to the labels sewn on the clothes. Whilst bamboo is one of the least sustainable textiles out of sustainable fabrics, as it requires chemicals to go from fiber to fabric, it is still a major improvement on what most fashion brands typically go for (cotton, polyester, nylon etc.). Bamboo is organic and requires significantly less water than cotton and can be grown without use of fertilizers and pesticides. It also absorbs much more CO2 than cotton and more can be grown in less space. All dyes used on their products are also natural dyes from plants like Turmeric, Indigo and Madder Root or low impact fiber-reactive dyes. Hara means ‘green’ in Hindi, and they definitely live up to the name.