November | Take 5
With Rachael Proud, creative director of Raey
The designer on starting the much-loved label on its sustainability journey
Emma SellsHow do you set about making an already established and much-loved label more responsible? It’s a question Rachael Proud and her team have been asking themselves repeatedly over the past two years, carefully doing their homework and talking to sustainability experts in a bid to make Raey, Matches Fashion’s in-house brand, altogether less environmentally impactful. Advised to pick one big thing to focus on and start from there, they’re working on drastically reducing their use of virgin fibres, swapping them out for recycled fabric where possible, organic materials where not, and making use of the rolls of fabric left over from former collections. It’s just the start, and they’re at pains not to make any big claims about what they’re doing. “We’re trying to be really honest; we don’t want to say eco or sustainable or any of those words,” says Proud. “It’s what everything we do at Raey is always about. We don’t retouch imagery, our models come in as they want to be shot, and we just want to reflect that level of honesty into what we’re doing with the product.” So they’re being as upfront and transparent as possible about the origins of each of their pieces, outlining both the positive and negative. “We feel like sustainability is our homework, so all the information our customers could need is there in the product copy,” says Proud, “whether it’s organic cashmere and why that’s good, or if there’s anything terrible about it because we feel it’s our responsibility to say if something will never biodegrade but we think you’ll probably have it forever and pass it on to your children.”
Images courtesy of Raey
A former buyer and designer of Boutique at Topshop, Proud has been creative director of Raey for eight years. She’s overseen its evolution from a line of elevated basics to a cult fashion-insider favourite – its ‘Fold’ jeans have been worn by stylists, editors and everyone from Linda Tol and Maja Weyhe to Camille Charrière – all drawn to its wear-anywhere clean, minimal lines, oversized silhouettes and androgynous air. Its pieces manage to have both modern, of-the-moment appeal and a considered, timeless quality and longevity is baked into the design process. “We always think about people keeping our pieces regardless of responsibility,” says Proud. “That’s always been the ethos of the brand, that it’s for a woman who’s grown out of the high street and she wants to buy things and keep them for a long time.” The team also tries to make integrating new-season pieces with past favourites as easy as possible, using precisely the same shade of navy, say, at all times, so that clothes can be mixed and matched with ease. There’s still a long way to go, though, before the label is responsible from top to toe. “It’s a full-time job just getting the product to this point because the big wins were easy, but it’s the smaller things that you have to consider that will take much more time,” says Proud. “So we don’t have a firm long-term plan for the future yet. We’re just trying, bit by bit, to make the best decisions we can.”
Raey is available to shop from matchesfashion.com
