TIMELESS TEXTILES: KORDAL STUDIO

As the owner of womenswear collection Kordal Studio, Kordal is working to transform the fashion industry itself—by modeling sustainable and ethical manufacturing processes.

ARTICLE BY JULIE LANDRY | PHOTOGRAPHY KORDAL STUDIO

Mandy Kordal believes a well-made, well-fitting garment strengthens the wearer’s sense of self.

“It’s a way to wear your beliefs, to tell something about yourself without having to say anything,” Kordal explains. Fashion is a “powerful tool,” she says, with wide ranging impacts: boosting confidence, broadcasting identity, and even transforming posture.

Kordal’s parents live in northern Louisiana, and when she created the collection, she showcased it for the first time at Rodéo Boutique in Ruston.

“The support of the people there has been really cool,” she says. “That’s one of the great parts of owning a business—once you extend an arm and ask for help and support, so many people are really happy to do it.”

Kordal Studio specializes in knitwear and woven garments, sourcing sustainable materials for use in timeless pieces. Their stated mission is to “create garments in an ethical manner by paying [their] workers a fair wage, designing garments that are not trend focused, and using natural and organic textiles whenever possible.”

Because Kordal Studio is not trend-focused, they are able to take time to perfect the design, quality, and fit of their garments, initiating the process a full year out from the eventual release.

“Our clothing really has a tactile experience,” Kordal says. The yarn, canvas, and other fabrics used by Kordal Studio all boast unique textures rarely found in “fast fashion” garments. Many customers express that the clothes are “so much better in person,” largely due to the “hand-feel” of the textiles.

Kordal describes her collection as classic but comfortable. She lives and works in Brooklyn, and her experiences walking in the city impact her design concepts. She says it’s important to have “something you can feel good in but also comfortable in. I hate when I wear something and immediately regret it.”

She wants her customers to wear her clothes over and over again—it’s all part of the sustainable model.

The apparel industry is one of the most polluting industries in the world; it is responsible for 10 percent of the global carbon footprint. And Kordal thinks that comes as a surprise to most people.

“Textiles for some reason don’t enter people’s minds in terms of a pollutant,” Kordal says. But most companies in the industry waste fabric, water, and other resources at every stage of the manufacturing process, often burning design samples and leftover fabrics rather than recycling them.

Kordal Studio’s knitwear is fully-fashioned, meaning the garment is created to the exact shape of the design without generating any unused materials. For their woven garments, Kordal Studio works with textile manufacturers like The New Denim Project in Guatemala, who operate based on closed-loop production practices and make use of all manufacturing byproducts.

To give an example of those production practices, Kordal says, “As they clean the cotton, there’s a dust or fiber waste material that falls onto the ground. They are able to collect all of that material and use it as a compost. So they bring this to local coffee farms, and they use it for composting.”

Kordal selects vendors and fabrics strategically, always vetting whether or not the garments made will stand the test of time and combat the fast fashion mentality of the mainstream industry.

“It limits what we can work with, but in a good way. Because it forces you to be more creative and establish longer-term relationships with the vendors,” Kordal says.

In the past, the apparel industry designed for two-four fashion seasons. Now, the industry labors to sustain up to 50 “micro-seasons.”

“The pace of production right now is so fast, it’s just wild to think about,” Kordal says. “There’s a lot of waste in a lot of different stages, because they’re trying to keep up with the rapid trends—oversampling and overdeveloping, hoping one of the trends is going to be a best seller, and trying to keep up with the other fast fashion brands.”

Kordal hopes that if more companies like hers can point out and prove the market for sustainable fashion, larger companies will take note and change their current practices. To attract that market, Kordal Studio works to design quality pieces that will last.

“Our clothes aren’t cheap, necessarily,” Kordal says. But she encourages consumers to consider their purchases based not on flat price, but on “price-per-wear.”

“If something is more expensive, say $100, but it’s really good quality and you’re going to wear it at least a hundred times, then it was $1 per wear. Versus, say, some vintage things I’ve bought that I don’t wear that often, it’s been closer to $15 per wear.”

She encourages consumers to “invest” in pieces they love. “It’s not worth buying it if you’re not going to wear it all the time,” she says.

Kordal Studio stays with their customers throughout the lifetime of their garments, offering mending services to help extend the clothing’s life and a take-back program for garments that become unwearable.

The business requires consistent attention. When she first started, Kordal says she worked all the time. “I self-funded; I freelanced; I worked nights and weekends. I was definitely burning the candle at both ends.”

But over the past three years, the business has become more financially stable, and Kordal can balance life and work more effectively. She’s particularly grateful to her first employee for that chance.

“Being able to say ‘we’ in an email—and it’s really we, not just me! It’s really nice to say that you have a team,” she says. “I started this when I was 25. I didn’t really know what I was doing. It’s cool to see that it’s become this living, breathing thing that’s really growing.”

Due to the seasonal and cyclical nature of the fashion industry, certain times of the year demand more of Kordal. But after eight years, she believes she’s learned how to be patient and move forward no matter the difficulty.

“There’s a lot of fires you have to put out,” Kordal says. “But I think I’ve gotten a lot more zen about it, because there’s nothing you can do other than problem-solve. And at the end of the day, it’s not heart surgery, so there’s no point in getting that upset.”

Now, she’s able to see the business “moving forward, rather than being reactionary.” And she’s learned that operating a business is neither easy nor universally attainable.

“It requires a super specific type of person,” Kordal says. “You have to have that staying power, you have to just keep going for it, because it’s so hard. So many times I’ve had breakdowns. Luckily, I have a really amazing partner and family, and they’ve been my champions. But there are times when it’s really, really easy to want to quit.”

For Kordal, however, the importance of the sustainability message keeps her motivated.

“I was going on this path of focusing on sustainability even when it wasn’t necessarily cool,” she says. “And there’s this quote I really love by Steve Martin that’s, ‘Be so good, they can’t ignore you.’ You can’t be like anybody else. You have to go forward with what you’re interested in and what excites you, and eventually, people will want to be a part of it—or not.”

She hopes that if Kordal Studio and similar companies model better practices, the mainstream fashion industry won’t be able to ignore them, eventually becoming more ethical, more sustainable, and more inclusive.

For now, she’s focused on expanding her business. She plans to open a studio and retail space in Brooklyn within the next year, and she wants to become more involved in environmental work.

“Last year, we did a month-long popup at this hotel in Brooklyn called the Wythe Hotel, and we had a workshop series throughout the month. We did a natural dye class, embroidery class, and patching workshop. My friend has a farm upstate with Angora bunnies and makes handspun Angora yarn… so we had her come down and bring her Angora bunnies for a meet and greet, which was really fun,” Kordal laughs. “I love things like that, getting people interested in the process.”

Kordal Studio also hosted a panel event at the Wythe Hotel screening room titled “On the Fringe,” which discussed “unconventional pathways on the fringes of the fashion industry.” Panelists included Arianne Engelberg, creative director for The New Denim Project; Carmen Gama, Renew designer for Eileen Fisher; Khira Goins-Paxton, founder of Portion Magazine; and Jaadi Fonseca, a then-student in fashion design at Parsons School of Design.

“Things like that are really exciting for me. That’s where we want to put our energy now that our design process has a good flow,” Kordal says.
And the designing certainly won’t stop. This fall, a new shoe will join the collection—and Kordal is excited. It’s a Moroccan babouche-style slipper made of alpaca fibers with a dark wood heel.

“They’re really comfortable kind of slide/flats. I’m really excited, because I’ve been wanting to design shoes for so long,” she says. “I’m hoping that it does well.”

With more shoes on the ground proving the flexibility of sustainable fashion, Kordal hopes she can help encourage change in the industry at large.