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Rapanui is an Eco-Fashion company from the Isle of Wight, that makes Organic, Ethical clothing using Renewable Energy with award-winning traceability. Rapanui is about making eco-fashion cool.

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Win a Cotton Monster

Category: Customer Care

WIN A one-of-a-kind Rapanui Cotton Monster. GRRR!

It's important to know where your clothing comes from and how it was made, because if you don't know, you can't make good choices about what to buy. As well as Traceability, we should think a lot about what to make the clothing from and how much energy is used across its lifespan.

The way to make clothing with the least impact is to not make it at all of course - to not dispose of it to start with, and instead to continue to use it - but the reality is that most clothing in today's world is thrown away then replaced, for a number of reasons that are deeply engrained.

Therefore it's important for 'sustainable clothing' to have considered where the clothing goes to at the end of its life, and work towards a goal where the lifecycle of clothing, including disposal, is improved.

The disposal stage is something we're only just getting started on. There are many routes - first, we could try to make clothes that last forever. We could also make clothes from materials that are perpetually recyclable, cradle-to-cradle style. Or we could make clothing that fully biodegrades in the ground, going back into plants. Luckily by using more natural and organic materials, it's this route that we're probably closer to than most. Alternatively we could find a good use for the waste stream, like making t-shirts into shopping bags or... monsters.

The reality is that there's no golden bullet to solve the problem - good design, using biodegradable or recyclable materials, making things that last, and if there is waste from this economy, finding a suitable use for it - it's all worthy work for companies trying to be more sustainable. It's about getting a bit more of all of these things. Sustainability, after all, is about working towards a better future.

 

Okay, now how do I win the monster?

When we were doing some research on waste recovery, we stumbled upon Cotton Monster -  a site by Jennifer Strunge. She's an artist / maker and creates monsters from recycled clothing and linens. Each monster is proper scary, unique and handcrafted.

It's a great example of what you can do with a t-shirt, rather than throw it in the bin, and Jennifer has managed to build a small business around what most companies consider a waste stream. Reclaiming, recycling and turning fabrics into long-lasting gifts. We sent her some scrap fabric and tees to see what could be done with our old fabrics and a month later, this came back. Totally awesome.

Meet Murray. He's the nastiest recycled monster in the land. He lives under beds and is awake at night.. in the darkness..  and only interested in one thing - eating little children.

We've decided to give Murray away to one of our customers.

Send us a picture of you wearing Rapanui plus a sentence about why he should be yours :)

 

 

 

 

 

Come Dine with Me IOW

Category: Inside Rapanui

Come Dine With Me has developed a bit of a cult following in the last few years - like X Factor vs. Big Brother vs. Little Britain. Obviously we needed to get on it...

When we heard it was coming to the Isle of Wight, our Rob decided to give it a go, not least because the idea of a week's free meals seemed like quite a good deal. He's also got a solid reputation in the Rapanui wolfpack as being the go-to guy if you want some fine cuisine, and we all fancied his chances of bringing home the trophy.

The other guests included legendary hip-hop Isle of Wight celebrityman Derek Sandy, single mum Claire Cheek and posh pensioner Tina Raymond -  who all turned out to be a decent bunch to spend a week doing dinners with.

The show aired last Friday the 13th (uh oh) and we hadn't seen it before. To be completely honest, this was filmed the week before the new collection launch this past summer and as one of the chiefs here, Rob was rather busy. This meant he showed up on the night and sort of made it all up, but to our relief it seems he more than compensated with a constant stream of gags. He also managed to squeeze a different Rapanui t-shirt into every shot too - definitely works in sales then...

Some comedy highlights included:

Claire's insistence that deep fried cheese lumps are a "nice refreshing starter" , the random fireman, plus Island talisman Derek Sandy in his celebrity hot tub. In fact, there's too many, you're just going to have to Get over to 4oD and have a watch! (you might have to put up with a few adverts but we hope it's worth it).

Well done Rob :D

Santa Surfing at Christmas

Category: Inside Rapanui

The Grotto Documentary was our first foray into Christmas-themed comedy.

To be honest, we weren't sure if you guys would love the video, or think we were muppets -  but it made us laugh and that's what matters.

And in the end it went down so well that a few asked for more (and to be fair, we weren't sure what to do with all the outfits) so we thought we'd call up the whole Isle of Wight Surf Club Team and go jump in the sea.

Then the Associated Press got wind of it and decided to come down from London. Add the County Press photographer plus some confused onlookers, you could almost call it a media scrum. Santa and his team we're under pressure to perform.

However, it turns out that the sheer weight of water that these suits soak up doesnt really make for good surfing and Rudolph nearly sunk.

Was all a bit funny. Watch out in the weekend Christmas papers and online for the odd Rapanui sticker :)

 

From all at Rapanui,

Thankyou for visiting / shopping / liking and making 2011 a great year.

We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Santa Video

Category: Inside Rapanui

It's that time again - The logs are on the fire, the nights are drawing in and the days are filled with the distant clinks as the nation's nanas furiously knit those patterned jumpers in time for the big day.

In the Grotto meanwhile, Santa, his elves and Rudolph are working hard to make sure their Christmas goes smoothly - with the workshop struggling in the recession, times are hard. Job cuts have hit the sleigh team, with the reindeers made redundant. Only Rudolph has been kept on, but he's struggling to make the difficult transition over to the sales team.

With deadlines looming and the team's morale at an all time low, can Santa restore the all-important Christmas spirit?

Rudolph has suggested the following to boost sales...

...but Santa thinks that might not be enough, and instead looks to the Inspirational leaders of the world to solve the crisis of confidence, and restore trust within the Grotto...

Post-Carbon Institute Vid

Category: Ambassadors

Essential Viewing.

Think it does a good job of simplifying the whole sustainability thing.

Met Office Awards for Excellence

Category: Awards

Met Office Awards for Excellence

The Met Office is one of the world's leading scientific research bases, and the world's top publisher of climate change data. A lot of people think that they just do our weather forecasts, but it couldn't be further from the truth: This place literally blew us away.

We rolled up to their Exeter building and got through the MOD security. There are around 1500 people working here, some of them flying research aircraft, labs that make and test equipment, property teams that manage their 200 or so field instrument sites, and a huge steel-reinforced, fireproofed section completely on lockdown, doing the essential, national security and military meteorology. You're not allowed in, they're not allowed out - if there's a fire, they sit it out in their fireproofed rooms until the next shift takes over. Hardcore.

They have a supercomputer the size of Rapanui HQ that has its own connection to the national grid, and despite some world-class energy efficiency measures, still needs around three times as much power as the Scilly Isles to operate.

This is the place where the smart kids from school end up - we were lucky enough to watch the chief forecasters working on this week's storm warnings for Scotland, watching the weather track in and issuing their alerts - then 5 minutes later seeing it go up on BBC news on the big screen TV. Upstairs there's a secret place too where there is no noise, and the worlds brightest minds are gathered up, given a budget and left alone to do research: the world-famous Hadley centre.

For a bunch of weathermen, this place is very, very cool - we were speechless really - think Michael Fish meets 007.

Awards for Excellence.

Around Christmas each year, the whole of the Met Office come together in the atrium of their building (there's a river that runs through it, really) for an internal awards do. We were invited up to present the award for best scientific / business achievement. The winner was a cross-departmental team who'd made a tool called virtual Met Mast. Their work makes it easier for Wind farm developers to predict energy yields at a new site. This is usually a p.i.t.a.  It will make it faster and cheaper to find new sites and bring the price of renewable energy down. Massive contribution to renewable energy, and their product had made £300k of sales already this year which went straight back in the public pot. Skills.

It was about four years ago in a renewable energy class that a conversation with a Met Office scientist about climate change inspired us to do something about it. We realised that the science was so much more advanced, and cooler, than people realise - but it's hard to know this with all the other things going on in our lives, like facebook and tv.  So maybe that's how we could help - making this more accessible. This visit was like going full circle in a way, going back to the Met Office and meeting the same people, who are still doing the same great work: With our New Met Office collection our job is to take that work and package it up into a cool, wearable, buyable product that can help communicate, reach out and spread that work to the public - whilst feeding money back into sustainable industries.

The one thing that made us realise why this place is special was the weather room. Seeing the forecasters working frantically to get their weather warnings out to the public put their work in perspective: yes they're very smart people. But these 1500 people in a building in Exeter are there because they want to protect you and I, and make our lives easier and safer.

We're looking forward to another great year working with the Met Office with some new limited edition products available, and more on their way, and we'll never look at a weather forecast the same way again.

 

 

 

 

Base Jumping London Central

Category: Ambassadors

What did you do before work today?

Woke up, had some porridge, BASE jumped off a block of flats in London, as you do.

Check out this amazing dawn footage by Joseph Ford and Dale Reubin of Rapanui ambassador Dan Witchalls, base jumping in London city centre. Nuts.

Edinburgh Zoo Pandas

Category: Good Causes

We're stoked to have teamed up with Edinburgh Zoo to make t-shirts for their new Giant Pandas, Tian Tian and Yang Guang.

If you've seen the news recently you'll probably have seen the two giant pandas that have arrived at Edinburgh Zoo - the first to live in the UK for almost 20 years. The Zoo is keen to raise awareness about conservation and asked us to create a t-shirt made from bamboo  to sell alongside the visitor’s attraction.

Whilst keeping animals in captivity isnt ideal, our world is very far removed from the natural ecosystems that once sustained life as it should be - in reality, people are moving further and further away from the natural world and this results in detatchment from understanding the impacts of our behaviour. In our cities, drastic changes are needed to reconnect people with wildlife. We think it’s a good thing to raise awareness of conservation and sustainability and there is already nationwide interest in the project, creating discussion about the conservation of Pandas, wider issues of sustainability and in some cases politics.

We recently won and RSPCA Good Business Award in reflection of our efforts to bring conservation issues into the mainstream through our fashion products, and that’s the plan at Edinburgh's zoo: To create a destination for people to go and learn all about conservation and sustainability in real life. Based on what we could see from Edinburgh's enthusiasm for education, we decided our Panda tees were the perfect fit.

We do understand though, that keeping animals in captivity is a sensitive issue – and it’s right that there are groups that look out for animals, and question motives. Are we benefiting this endangered species with captive breeding programs:Is it cruel or do the animals know no different, having been bred in captivity? Or is all the above a fair price to pay if thousands of visitors go away educated and inspired to do more for conservation in their lives; you decide.

If nothing else, bringing Panda’s to the UK is a great opportunity to get people thinking – and talking – about sustainability, and what we want to do about it as humans, and we're pleased to be involved in the discussion.

Let us know your opinion via our comments below.

The Sail Loft

Category: Environment

Had a wicked night over at Ellen MacArthur Foundation's place in the Sail Loft last night.

One of Cowes oldest buildings, this place was built to make sails for Ratsey & Lapthorn, a world famous company whose history is pretty much the history of yachting.

From its origins in Cowes and early involvement with the Royal Yacht Squadron, the firm grew and for 100 years, Ratsey & Lapthorn were the sailmakers of choice for yachts competing for the America's Cup, and had a client base that included Kings, Emperors and tycoons.

Upstairs in the loft, Dame Ellen MacArthur and a team of academics, writers, thinkers and scientists are working on a project: to rethink the way our world works, and to help engineer more sustainable economies. This place is regarded as one of the most forward-thinking organisations on sustainable economies in the world, and is tucked away in a loft on the sleepy Isle of Wight. Awesome.

Ellen MacArthur set up this foundation to raise awareness and help accelerate the integration of Circular Economies amongst consumers, businesses and governments. Current economies are based on a "Take, Make and Dispose" model, or linear economy, where at each stage of the process there is waste. Current environmental thinking is based on reducing the impact of this model - of recycling some of this waste, or trying to encourage people to 'use less' - this doesn't change the outcome it just buys us time. If the system doesn't work, trying to optimise it is a waste. What if we just changed the system?

This is the focus of the work by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and they promote ideas based on a new economic model - the circular economy - where materials and resources in the economy perform a loop: Imagine that Waste is Food - and that products are designed to be easily taken apart and reformed into new products, and that this whole system is powered by renewable energy? This is a circular economy.

We've been doing a bit with the Foundation, recently going with their team to the World Responsible Economic Forum as guest speakers, and integrating some of their ideas into our product development.

Last night was a chance to have a beverage and some nibbles, and to stop and enjoy the year of progress of a bunch of people working to rethink the future. Cheers to that.

Business in the Community Award

Category: Awards

Rapanui: Business in the Community Award 2011

This Friday we won the 2011 Business in the Community Award at the chamber of commerce do, here on the Isle of Wight. Last year we had a chat about caterpillars to Chris Packham, a hard act to follow, but this year he might have been pipped by Louis Attrill (Olympic Gold medal rowing hero) who came over later on and helped us get rid of a bottle of Drambuie that we'd aquired from the bar.

Having made it safely home we thought it a good time to mention some of our collaborators; young, talented and creative people on the Isle of Wight who have worked with Rapanui this year - the unsung heros of some of our projects behind the scenes.

A round of applause please for...

 

James Ioannou

You may have heard of of this guy if you know a bit about bikes - James is a bit of a legend in the dirt-jumping world and despite a few injury setbacks, has managed to gain a lot of recognition for his exploits. One standout feature was his "Red Bike, Blue Bike" video filmed in France for Rapanui. Since then, the flying affro has got stuck into photography, and turned out to be rather good at it. We got James invovled to shoot our Spring/Summer collection at the start of 2011 - solid results. He's now gone on to finish his photography degree at uni. Backflip-Beanpole, we would wish you luck for your photography - but you don't need it. #OneToWatch

 

Emma Harris

The Harris Hawk dropped by Rapanui in 2010 to interview the founders for her local collaborative project, I.Love.Wight - an online magazine profiling the Island's young creatives. Em ended up staying on to do an internship in our marketing team, calling people up, writing stories and co-ordinating photoshoots. A highlight for her was breaking into the Isle of Wight festival, without a ticket, chatting to all the celebs and gaining entry to the festival director's office, then posing for a photo with him. This is the 007 of the journalism world. Em has gone on to pursue a career in journalism, keep your eyes peeled.

 

Will Jackson

Action: Think of Quentin Tarantino meets Steve Coogan, and you've got Will Jackson - a most talented editor, director and cameraman. Will has been working with us this Autumn on a few behind-the-scenes projects including our Office Christmas Special. Will's gone on to set up his own media company, Will Jackson Media and won a contract in the new year with... Rapanui Clothing Ltd. starting in January. Aaaaand cut.

 

Luke Davis

Last but not least, The Duke. Meet Luke Davis - previously one of the 1 Million unemployed young people in Britain signing on at the Jobcentre each week. Luke came in voluntarily to get some work experience, and made himself so useful  we couldn't do without him. Fast forward one year and the Duke is now in charge of a team of 3 in the customer service department and he's the man who hand writes a thankyou on to every single order we get at Rapanui. Luke is an example of going the extra mile - someone who has earned himself a job - and he's here to stay.

 

So there we have it, our community heros. The saying goes "tell me who you're with, and I'll tell you who you are" 

...well if this lot are anything to go by... that makes us a tall, affro'd female writer with a penchant for film making and outstanding customer care.

And that is clearly an Award-winning combo.

 

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