Lura: Northwestern’s Sustainable Fashion Startup
Graphic by Meher Yeda. Image via Pexels.
Although Regina Morfin and Avantika Raikar founded a company that helps make fashion more sustainable, they still have not gone vintage shopping together.
“Wait, we have!” Morfin says over the Zoom call. Raikar’s hesitancy to respond prompts Morfin to clarify. She exclaims, “In New York!”
Morfin rethinks it. “Well, technically we didn’t go thrift shopping. We went regular shopping.”
“Ugh, yes, I remember,” Raikar responds. “I was so set on buying a necklace, and I didn’t find anything.”
Image via Northwestern Garage LinkedIn
Morfin, a sophomore in Northwestern’s co-op program for manufacturing and design engineering, and Raikar, a sophomore studying industrial engineering, founded Lura, a company focused on helping small fashion businesses find sustainable textiles. Through building their startup, the two women have formed a long-lasting friendship.
Like many other Northwestern-startup love stories, they met freshman year through the Launch incubator in EPIC, an entrepreneurship club based out of The Garage. With 10 minutes to organize into teams with whom they’d be developing a business for an entire quarter, Morfin and Raikar chose the same team. But not because of each other. They both wanted to be with the same partner — that is, the third member of the group. Great minds think alike.
Soon they realized their potential as a team: Morfin as a dreamer and Raikar as a realist. They ditched their idea from Launch, an eyebrow wax service for college students, and began brainstorming for a new path.
Morfin and Raiker discovered some of the fashion industry's ugliest aspects.
Lura Fact Sheet. Graphic by Meher Yeda.
In light of learning about this data, Morfin and Raikar created Lura. Lura functions as a consultant, connecting fashion brands with manufacturers that sell sustainable fabrics. Currently, they are working on creating a database that will organize sustainable textiles and their manufacturers, making it easier for brands to find sustainable fabrics. Mediating the process of finding eco-friendly material, Lura empowers designers, allowing them to focus on their designs rather than sourcing.
Image via Lura
Raikar and Morfin highlight Dinosaur Hampton and Soft Haus as two brands they work with.
“I went on the website for Antidote, a small sustainable retailer in Miami, and emailed all the brands listed on the site,” Morfin says. “I first reached out to just chat about their problems during our research stage, and then I reached out again when we were ready to offer a service.”
They don’t have a huge fabric product offering right now, says Raikar. The way Lura functions is that they see what type of fabrics brands are looking for through consultations, and then go out to find those materials on the clothing brand’s behalf. Lura does not plan to hold or distribute the actual fabrics but serve as the social connection between the brands and manufacturers.
For example, Lura pitched to Dinosaur Hampton and Soft Haus that they use organic cottons, hemps, bamboo viscose and recycled polyester. Once the brands chose their desired materials and prices, Lura would lead them to the right manufacturers. Before Lura, Dinosaur Hampton used ready made thrifted pieces and embroidered them. Now, the brand uses an organic cotton hemp French terry with a dyeing system that allows them to reuse water. Soft Haus previously used pima cotton knits that get dyed in Peru. Raiker says it's unclear whether Soft Haus has ordered or used any of Lura’s pitched fabric options.
They work most closely with Heliopolis, another student-run company, which designs sweatshirts. Heliopolis follows the model of made by order: Heliopolis does not have an inventory, only making the item when someone has placed an order. Because of this small scale production, Lura could not use the typical cut and sew manufacturing system. They had to find freelance seamstresses, which meant calling random people all over the country to solicit their services.
“That was a fun experience calling a ton of people,” Morfin says. “I’d ask, ‘Hey, can you make a hoodie? How much would you charge?’”
On Lura’s instagram they also educate everyday consumers about where and how to shop sustainably. Their Instagram features #LuraApprovedBrands to shop at such as Eve Wear, Kordal Studios and BackBeat.
The change must come from the companies, Morfin and Raikar say, but that doesn’t mean as consumers, we can’t have an impact. Being fashionable may no longer be about what you wear but about having a socially responsible mindset when it comes to shopping.
“Before all of this I was a shopaholic. Now, I’m very conscious about what I buy, and make sure it’s gonna be used a lot” Raikar says. “It’s not attainable to buy everything sustainable. The responsibility is on the brand, even though the consumer should be pushing for the change.”
Morfin recommends shopping on the website Good On You. The site rates brands based on how they treat their employees and workers, their use of animal skin or fur in products, their carbon and energy use, and their chemical use and disposal. Good On You makes it easy for users to sustainably shop, organizing a landing page by clothing items you may be searching for rather than just listing various brands and their ratings.
Raikar advocates for an end to the unnecessary Halloween, formal and crush party shopping. Buying themed outfits adds up, contributing to your own carbon footprint as well as the fashion industry’s. Those clothes sit in a drawer only worn once. Raikar urges us to think about the unnecessary purchases we make.
“There are so many people that do this,” Raikar says. “I bet you can go and dig out costumes from other people’s stuff, and just use it again, switching between people. For 10 events, people probably buy a shirt for each, and each one uses 700 gallons of water. That adds up so fast, and the amount of people doing that is crazy. Don’t do that. I don’t know what else to tell you.”
Beyond lessening the environmental impact of the fashion industry, Lura inadvertently changes the way the industry functions. After conducting dozens of interviews with small fashion brands, Morfin and Raikar learned how connections drive the fashion industry, making the playing field for entry unequal.
“It's really hard for us.” Morfin says. “This industry is so outdated. It focuses all on connections.”
A call with one company revealed that finding fabrics had never been an issue for them since the designer had been in the industry for years. However, calls with many others suggested the struggle to connect with manufacturers when just entering the business.
Among their various manufacturer connections so far, Lura has found a source for biodegradable nylon. Think sportswear and athleisure that encourages a healthier you and makes for a healthier planet too. The science: after landfilling, biodegradable fabrics turn into organic matter, or biomass, due to their higher level of enhanced polyamides, according to Fulgar, an international leader in the manmade fibre market and textile sector.
Although they struck gold with this biodegradable nylon, it hasn’t been easy. Morfin and Raikar rely on cold calls and emails to build their young brand. They exemplify perseverance, as most of the time they are left with no response.
“Last year, through Entrepreneurship 325, we interviewed a bunch of brands, only getting responses probably by about 5% of them,” Raiker says. “ After we went through our first iteration of those, we began to prove that our concept was needed in the industry. Then, I went on Instagram and messaged a ton of brands about offering a free consultation to set them up with fabrics. The consultation went well with a lot of brands. We sent them an invoice, and then they fell off the edge of the world. These were people who were very eager, or at least sounded very eager.”
In a time when many are questioning the value of college while it currently exists virtually, Lura underscores Northwestern’s continuing relevance. Last winter, with the help of a Northwestern alum and a Northwestern parent, Morfin and Raikar made connections with the bulk of manufacturers they use. Hard work mixed with purple pride goes miles.
Imagine the brands themselves dealing with these cold calls on top of creating their actual designs! By providing designers with a database of sustainable textile manufacturers and a platform to connect with them, Lura has begun to bridge some of the gaps in the fashion industry that inhibit the potential for creative freedom.