The Savile Row Company sets the Eco-Friendly Packaging Standard

The Savile Row Company can be found in the heart of London’s Savile Row, home to the world’s finest tailors and have been crafting finely tailored shirts. With a flagship bespoke store at No 40 Savile Row they have also created a mail order business for their ‘ready to wear’ collections. As one of the first male fashion brands to go online, launching their website in 2001 it is no surprise that the Savile Row Company are now leading the way in Eco-Friendly Packaging.

Anyone who has purchased a shirt will doubtless love the look of a folded shirt when it arrives in it’s packaging only to be instantly infuriated by the poly mailer, the plastic bag the shirt is in, the cardboard, tissue paper and then the infernal plastic stiffeners and pins that hold the shirt for display. With the exception of card and tissue, none of the packaging is recyclable and it’s almost impossible to buy a shirt without ruining the environment.

The Savile Row Company care about green issues and they’ve taken their responsibility to make changes in order to live and work more consciously and sustainably seriously. So seriously that they’ve started eradicating all single use plastic across the company, from the offices, to production warehouses and what their customers receive.

Although the Savile Row Company shirt bags were already made of recycled plastic and were themselves recyclable, they would always remain as plastic for centuries to come. Not only that, but as a consumer I personally find it nigh on impossible to find somewhere such ‘recyclable’ packaging can actually be recycled and it inevitably ends up in landfill. This is why the Savile Row Company have decided to take their sustainability efforts a step further in 2019.

The Savile Row Company Eco-Friendly Packaging

The Savile Row Company’s outer packaging for all mailing items has been changed to a fully compostable and 100% recyclable paper bag, whilst their shirt packaging is now plastic-free and compostable. This means the plastic looking bag their men’s formal shirts arrive in will no longer be made from actual plastic but will instead be formed from fully decomposable potato starch, leaving behind no trace of plastic.

All the additional packaging items such as pins and a collar inserts have been redesigned and the Savile Row Company have managed to come up with a unique way to remove this additional plastic without ruining the presentation of the shirt through the careful design and cutting of cardboard.

Now, when you buy a shirt or other garments from the Savile Row Company, all of the packaging can genuinely be recycled – it’ll either be paper, cardboard, or compostable – bags can either go on you compost heap or if they go to landfill they’ll do no harm to the environment.

There has doubtless been cost involved in this fantastic leap forward in apparel packaging, but it’s not only necessary but a step that here at Tamebay we hope other clothing businesses will follow. We only have one world and in Savile Row Company’s own survey 1000 UK residents that discovered 63% of respondents consider eco-friendly packaging very important, with an additional 33% stating it was somewhat important. 71% stated their decision to purchase from a brand was influenced by the company’s ‘green’ ethics.

When asked ‘Do you think the retail industry needs to do more to be more sustainable with packaging?’ an overwhelming 94% said they did and the Savile Row Company not only listened but took steps that put them at the head of all retailers both online and offline in Eco-Friendly Packaging.