SHELTER CLOTHING

Shelter Clothing owner Alison, sitting on some steps in Brooklyn, New York

Shelter clothing makes pieces for you to live, work and play in. 

We’re a slow fashion brand inspired by the principles of beauty, quality and sustainability. Our pieces flow with the architecture of the body, making space for effortless movements in moments of play and work. 

All of our designs were created with every season in mind from materials that will improve with wear. Each Shelter garment is a timeless addition to your wardrobe. 

We’ve grown from the days that Alison sewed each piece by hand, with her newborn sleeping on her back, lulled by the hum of the machines, to the opening of our Courtenay storefront and expanding online store. We continue to develop our linen basics line to include new beautiful materials such as cotton canvas, silk and more to come. 

Today, our female led business is focused on growing Shelter in the best way we know how with our focus on creating an ethical workplace, practicing sustainability and connecting with our community every chance we get. 

Our children’s line, Shelter kids repurposes scraps from Shelter into quality children’s wear made for playing hard. Find sustainable styles for your mini me here. 

Shelter is a 100% women run team, with headquarters in the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island.

 

ETHICAL 

It has always been important to Alison and the team to be ethical throughout the entire brand. But it’s not really enough to just say ‘we are ethical’ with nothing to back it up. There are no rules or guidelines you need to follow to throw the word ‘ethical’ next to your business name. 

It's not enough to simply say we are 'sustainable', 'ethical' or 'inclusive', instead we want to show you. What we've done, what we've been doing, and where we want to go. 

When Shelter first started, we sewed absolutely everything in house. Today, 100% of our garments are made in Vancouver, Canada. The factories that we work with are all part of BC labour laws and at least one of our team members has visited and toured the factories in person.

Alison’s dream when growing this brand was never centered around selling more products, it was always about cultivating a strong community of beautiful women behind these pieces and that shows in each decision we make for the business. If we can’t find a way to grow that feels organic and exciting we pivot in another direction. 

Our team is women run and we only employ women on our direct team. We work towards creating a community for our staff and offer competitive wages and benefits. Half of our team are mothers and we strive to create an environment that is in line with the expectations of being a mother.

 

SUSTAINABLE

Lately at Shelter we've been talking a lot about what it means to be sustainable. Sustainability is a top priority for each and every member of our team, it affects all the decisions we make both big and small. Because of this, we do our very best to never overproduce. If we do, there's energy going into repurposing, dying or reusing scraps of fabrics to make pieces for our Shelter kids collections.

We also use sustainable packaging whenever we can. That means that we don't use any plastic in our packaging or in production. We use only biodegradable fabrics and focus on learning how we can repair things or make amends whenever possible.

This also means that we don't participate in 'trends'. We create pieces that are timeless and can be worn multiple ways over multiple seasons. We are not marketing overconsumption or 'hauls' we are simply here to share pieces that we've created that we hope you'll love for a very long time.

 

INCLUSIVE

We really struggle with the word inclusive. Because no brand can truly be inclusive. To us it means consistent, focused work on making sure that our garments are accessible and inclusive to all.

This means that we understand that the brands we carry in our shop, the influencers that we work with and the content created is all part of our responsibility in creating a welcoming and kind environment.

We are not assumed to be experts. We understand that some of us come from a place of privilege. But each day we are learning and dedicating ourselves to making decisions that will resonate with as much of our community as possible.

A big part of that is our size range. We are currently working on expanding our size offerings. Most brands start with an XS or size 2 as their base size during product development. This is how the term sample size came to be. Our 'sample size' is an XL and we work up and down from there. We fit test every single garment on a size 2X body and make edits based on the needs of that body before any piece goes into production.

The base size of the Shelter brand is women’s bodies with rolls, breasts. You can’t create a garment for someone with rolls off a pattern meant for a body without any.

We understand that inclusivity is a huge part of being in the fashion industry and if we can either fight it or be part of the problem. We're choosing the former. 

 

If you have any questions on these topics, we welcome full transparency on our brand. Please send us an email info@shelterclothing.ca and we would love to chat further.