About us - who we are & what we do
Our Mission:
To provide gorgeous eco chic wedding attire at a fair price. Sustainability, social responsibility, and affordability are our priorities; they're reflected in every aspect of our business. We believe that we can be successful while honoring our values and giving truly exceptional service.
Our Ethics Are Also Eco Chic
Unlike many eco-designers, we can account for every link in our (very short) supply chain. Conscious Elegance green wedding attire is entirely made in the USA; we don't farm out to overseas workers and our creations are not mass-produced.
Our sustainable and organic wedding dresses are custom made for each and every client. We are a small, independent, woman-owned company and we employ only local artists, all who earn a fair living wage. We offer exceptional customer service and make it easy and convenient for you to have a fabulous, custom-made, eco chic wedding dress at an honest price that we give right up front.
(And the People approve! We're proud and tickled to have been awarded inclusion by Green America and have achieved an environmental award for our work.)
Hemp, silk, organic cotton and nutshells make a truly Green wedding dress
We use only 100% certified organic cottons, 100% bamboo, pesticide-free hempsilk blends, and reclaimed materials in our dressmaking. To be kindest to our fellow fauna, we offer fabrics with the highest percentage of plant fiber that we can find. We even use certified organic cotton thread in all of our garments (very rare, even in eco-dressmaking!). Our private label is sewn on certified organic cotton and our buttons are carved from sustainable tagua nuts, the sale of which supports rain forest preservation. Our suppliers have also pledged to responsible practice: no sweatshop conditions or underage children are employed by any of our sources.
We support the careful stewardship of resources: our creator started Conscious Elegance on a reclaimed Singer Model 99K that was freecycled to her by an elderly post-war bride. All of our creations are sewn using individual machines and handwork only, in a smoke-free and pet dander-free environment.
Thanks to our certified organic cotton thread, we can offer 100% organic wedding gowns!
Our belief in sustainable and responsible business practice
At Conscious Elegance we own our equipment and inventory completely; we are debt-free and beholden to no one. This means that we are at liberty to craft each gown without worrying about margins, bottom lines or mass-production.
Whenever possible, we support working parents in independent and family-run small businesses for our supplies and notions. As a result, some of our gowns are priced higher than discount, synthetic, mass-produced dresses, but you will know that your gown was not made in an overseas sweatshop by underpaid laborers.
 Our administrative methods reflect our philosophy:
- We sew in home workshops and local studios to conserve resources, save on transportation costs and to be available to our families and communities.
- Our studio uses eco-friendly carpet made from recycled soda-bottles. Click on the pic to the left for a closer look!
- We use every scrap of our eco fabric and reclaim fabric for future dresses. We minimize waste in our day-to-day activities and what we no longer need, we donate to local schools for their art projects.
- We use only ethically-produced, fair-traded and recycled materials and protect wooded resources by using 100% post-consumer recycled paper for all of our paper needs, including our business cards.
- We re-use packaging materials and choose fully biodegradable whenever possible. For further details, please see Our Policies page.
Giving exceptional customer service
We impose no huge mark-up to inflate profits despite the typical 300%-700% wedding industry standard (sadly, those numbers are not exaggerated). We give you a clear and honest price up front, not some evasive 'range' that allows middle-men to pile on their share of profit without contribution. And we provide full security for your payment details; see Our Policies page for more information.
Making you feel happy as well as beautiful is of primary importance to all of us here. We've provided a helpful list of Frequently Asked Questions and are available by phone during our business hours or by email anytime. If you have a question, just ask us. We want our clients to love their entire wedding dress experience. If there is ever a problem, we will do our best to make it right.
Our ethical charity and contribution policy
Conscious Elegance is committed to supporting our world family. As part of that commitment, we pledge to donate 5% of our annual gross income (or the equivalent in donated goods) towards charities of environmental and humanitarian focus. That's gross income, so even if we do not make a profit, we will still give to our charities.
Caveat
The carbon-footprint of shipping overseas bothers us greatly. We have been looking into purchasing carbon credits but we've found that doing so would increase the dress shipping costs substantially. We understand and respect that many of our clients are on a budget and that cost is an important factor.
We suggest that overseas clients seek local sources for an ethical wedding dress before opting to order from abroad. That said, we know that there might be limited options open to an ethically-minded person; the majority of conventional dresses bought in local shops are themselves the result of overseas shipping. Should you wish to purchase a gown from us, we would be proud to be a part of your celebrations and we offer the option of UPS carbon-neutral shipping to send our garments cross-country or overseas. Please contact us for overseas shipping options and pricing.
Our gowns are made with a joyful purpose and a great love for what we do. We at Conscious Elegance want to create a more beautiful, more ethical world and invite you to join us.
Namaste.
"Be the change that you wish to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi
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