Currency

Crafting Sustainable Fashion: The Sustainably Small Approach

Crafting Sustainable Fashion: The Sustainably Small Approach

Bardot Bow Gallery is a small luxury designer accessory brand that champions sustainability in the world of fashion. From mindfully made-to-order pieces to utilizing locally sourced materials and supporting emerging talent, small businesses can make a big impact on creating an eco-conscious and inclusive world. Experience luxury-quality, customizable accessories while knowing you're contributing to a more sustainable future.

Small Fashion Brand, Small Footprint

Small businesses are key to a more sustainable and inclusive world, according to the World Economic Forum. Being a small business allows us to focus on quality over quantity and we are careful to design and create each hair accessory with intention and meticulous attention to detail. Unlike mass production, we take pride in producing only what we need, reducing excess waste in the process.

 

Vintage French Cottage Made to Order Bow Clip Barrette in Pink Rouge with vintage reclaimed limited supply ribbon

Mindfully Made-to-Order

Part of our charm comes from how we make our products. The majority of our accessories are Made-to-Order, a business production strategy that allows consumers to purchase products that are customized. For example, on velvet hair bows, you get to choose a fastener to suit your personal hair styling needs. Only once an order is placed, will any products be made start to finish and shipped. That's why our processing times are up to 2 weeks before shipping during peak season, like leading up to the holidays. 

 

summer bundle box scrunchies hair ties hair accessories

 

Made in Small Batches

Really popular styles, like scrunchies, are pre-produced by our makers in small batches of about 12 per color. This ensures that we don’t make more than we sell. Our most common scrunchie styles are left in multiple pieces for us to quickly assemble or tie our signature knot just before being shipped out. This helps us keep our lead times down to 2-5 days before shipping times, while still maintaining a high level of quality control.

 

Thoughtfully Designed

We take pride in creating unique and attractive high-end hair accessories for women and children. Customers are at the center of our design process, we try to make hair styling and accessorizing fun, functional, and easy with creative solutions and multi-use styles. Scrunchies and fasteners range in size to accommodate all hair lengths, types, and textures, but some of our accessories don’t require having hair at all. Read in depth about all the fasteners used in the shop here. The result is luxury quality hair accessories that elevate even a bad hair day, whether you’re a busy stay at home mom, a trend driven collector of designer pieces, or just trying to share the gift of locally made joy.

 

Sustainability In Mind

Fashion is one of the leading industries for waste and carbon emissions, and it’s important that we are the exception. We have continually innovated several hair accessories to be upcycled from locally sourced textiles and leftover scraps from other styles. Our small team of makers put as much fabric to use instead of going into a landfill. It takes time to skillfully plan patterns and pieces so that we can create something attractive and useful with the fabric we have left with the least amount of and even zero waste.

Our most recently released offering in the upcycled series is the Skinny Scrunchie Surprise Bundle Box, a mystery 6 pack of assorted small hair ties made with left over production fabric. It makes the perfect gift and each bundle is a uniquley currated selection of colors, patterns, and fabrics, check it out here.

 

bengals air accessories for women locally handmade in cincinnati

Local Love

In addition to making accessories dedicated to the local culture of Cincinnati, I regularly bring on new talent from the fashion design program at the University of Cincinnati. Read about them here to learn about their impact and their favorite creations and innovations. Supporting this small fashion accessory brand, customers are supporting a local economy of future fashion designers, small business owners, and their families.


Luxury Quality

We invest time every day to answer questions and provide excellent customer service. The customer experience starts before you even purchase, so we take great care to provide very detailed information in our listing descriptions. Since 2018 on Etsy, Bardot Bow Gallery has consistently earned 5-star ratings and customer satisfaction because of our commitment to high quality customer care and luxury level product quality standards. Our accessories are not throw away fads or meant to break easily, they’re little investments that you should be able to get a lot of wear out of, share, or even pass down. 

 

summer bundle box of assorted scrunchies and hair ties colorful pallets sustainable eco-friendly packaging

Packaging with Purpose

Our commitment to sustainability extends to our eco-friendly packing. We use recycled and recyclable materials for our packaging to minimize waste. Packaging is intentionally minimal and utilizing just recyclable boxes, tissue paper, and biodegradable mailers. The only part of our packing that isn’t recyclable are the branded stickers, packing tape, and shipping label because of the composition and adhesive. Although we are not perfect, we try to reuse packing filler from our regular mail deliveries and we encourage our customers to do the same, like saving the tissue paper for the next time you need to wrap a gift!


The Future is Green

We’re small, but not perfect. There is always room for improvement and every year we revisit our process to make plans for how we can do better and play our part to increase our positive impact on the planet. Thank you for being a part of our journey.

Previous Article Next Article