Sustainable designer Mara Hoffman to shutter business

Sustainable fashion designer Mara Hoffman is shuttering her New York-based brand. In a posting on the brand’s Instagram, Hoffman said after 24 years “it is time to take a pause for inbreath.” The brand’s Spring 2024 collection will be its last.

Citing the difficulties of operating a sustainable fashion label in the industry Hoffman acknowledge she had been “fighting for what feels like a long time to make this vision and model work in an industry that I believe deep down in its heart wants to heal and become better. But at the end of the day, its structure is archaic and was never built to prioritize Earth and its inhabitants.”

The brand’s raison d’être since 2015 has been to build and operate within a framework of sustainability. This framework included offering innovative design and manufacturing practices, responsible fabric and material selection, and increased contributions to, and participation in, social justice movements.

A graduate of the Parsons School of Design, Ms Hoffman founded her label in 2000, with the aim of inspiring and delighting through colours, prints and bold shapes. A shift to a more sustainable fashion cycle began a decade and a half later, with the brand stating: “We are deeply aware of the paradoxes that exist as an apparel company speaking about sustainability, which is why our definition of the term is about a framework within which our goals and objectives can evolve.”

“My work is far from done,” Ms Hoffman continued in her post. “I am looking forward to resting for a moment and then welcoming beautiful invitations into my life.”