Our values support our commitment to open, honest and respectful relationships with our customers, staff, suppliers, and manufacturers. Dalston is a small team – we see our staff as being members of our family and value the unique skills they bring to work. We provide a safe and inclusive workplace, where people feel empowered to do great work and share their creativity. We pay our staff, at the minimum, the NZ living wage.

Our Garments

We create garments ethically. This means we consciously take steps to confirm that everyone in our supply chain has their rights respected and a good quality of life. It’s also important to us that our garments are fairly priced and provide good value to our customers.

SUSTAINABILITY

We are on a journey to being a more sustainable brand and store.

From fabrics and trims to transport and packaging, we consider everything we do and how we can do it in a better way for the environment. Some of the things we do include:

Measuring Our Emissions

We measure our Carbon Footprint and set goals to reduce our emissions.
Our first reporting year was from 1.4.2021 - 31.3.2022 and we team with
Mindful Fashion NZ and EKOS to annually measure the emissions from our business.
We have used our first reporting year as the base year and we are tracking our reduction strategies progress against this year.

Delivery & Packaging

If you live locally to Dalston, we will deliver by foot, or pedal bike. We will also sometimes deliver by car, if an existing journey will pass by your place.

If we’re sending your package, we pack sensibly in a re-used box of appropriate size (as small as can be) or a compostable courier pack.

Repairs

If we can fix it, we will – bring your purchase back into the store or send us a photo, and we can discuss what we can do. Mending is free of charge.

Re-use

Wherever possible, we re-use:

        -  Swing tickets; when we sell a garment in-store, we remove the swing ticket and re-use it again and again.

        -  Plastic Bags; it is rare that our brands send stock in plastic (Yay!), but if they do, we re-use it and soft plastics we recycle in The Grey Lynn Community Centre Soft Plastics Recycling Bin.

        -  Paper printing; we try to avoid printing, and if we can’t, we use both sides of the paper.

        -  Plastic coat-hangers; we use these over and again, dropping ‘empties’ back to the presser.

        -  Fabric cut-offs; we reduce waste by making off-cuts into masks, scarves, little purses and bags, and also donate to the local Ōwairaka Community Club group  and home-crafters.

         -  Compost; food scraps from work lunches we take over the road to The Grey Lynn Community Centre and with permission leave in their Wairākau compost bin.

         -  Batteries; we have hardly any use for these and the few we use are deposited in The Grey Lynn Community Centre battery collection vessel when we need to replace them.

TRANSPARENCY

Transparency is important to us, and we like sharing information. We have begun adding fabric origins and certifications to our product pages. We strive to use more accredited and certified fabrics.

Our Fabrics

We buy our fabric locally from what is known as ‘deadstock’. This is fabric that has either been made for a larger designer or production house, or the mill has made extra while the machines are running. This means we use existing fabrics rather than increasing our carbon footprint by making more. Our small batch design runs result in negligible fabric waste, with Brian (our cutter) overseeing the pattern markers. Any leftovers are made into scarves, bags, purses or other accessories, or donated to Gladstone Primary School for kids to use in arts projects.

Our Knits

Some of our knitwear styles are made by Beverley Productions in Tauranga, here in NZ. The rest are made by ethical factories in China, sourced through Darren Elliot, a Melbourne-based agent. The factories Darren works with all have international accreditations to ensure they satisfy a comprehensive set of requirements, including:

        -  Workers involvement and protection

        -  Freedom of association and collective bargaining policy for workers

        -  No discrimination

        -  No child labour

        -  Protection for young workers

        -  Anti-bribery policy

Dalston hasn’t visited these factories ourselves, but we often chat by email with Cherry, the production manager at the main Chinese factory producing our knits.

MINDFUL FASHION NZ

Dalston is proud to have teamed up with Mindful Fashion NZ

Mindful Fashion is a New Zealand industry collective that aims to strengthen the local clothing and textile industry by promoting long term sustainable growth through responsible business practice and industry investment.

Membership is open to all members of New Zealand’s clothing and textile community whose values and actions align with the Mindful Fashion mission.

Here is the Mindful Fashion New Zealand Code Of Conduct that all members sign.

CONCLUSION

Thanks to these values, we believe Dalston is a brand that our customers, staff, and suppliers can be proud to be associated with.