Anaak’s Luxurious, Artisan-Made Collections Are as Sustainable as It Gets

 Designer: Marissa Maximo

Label: Anaak

Instagram: @anaakcollection

Location: Philadelphia—but spends half of the year working with artisans in India and Bolivia

Education: Rhode Island School of Design

Why it should be on your radar: Anaak is the rare fashion label that’s elegant, beautifully made, easy to wear, and sustainable, too—from organic fabrics to the women artisan groups Marissa Maximo employs around the world. Everything is made by hand with natural dyes, and Maximo hopes to empower women by giving them work and keeping their traditional crafts alive in an age of fast fashion.

It’s truly global: Maximo’s passport got a lot of stamps in the early 2000s. As the director of artwork and color at Anthropologie, she traveled to India, Taiwan, China, Indonesia, and South America to develop the brand’s prints by hand—“before everyone used computers,” she says with a laugh. The job introduced her to other cultures and crafts, and as fashion became increasingly hectic in the following years—Maximo also worked for Urban Outfitters during the recession—she felt she wasn’t making a positive impact. “The fast calendar just got really fast,” she says. “At Anthropologie, we had four seasons, then we had six, and then 12, and the disposal of it all was really disheartening. I wanted to make things that matter to the people who wear them.” So she started Anaak in 2015 as the polar opposite to all of that: Natural, organic clothes that harm the earth as little as possible and are socially impactful, too.

Most of the pieces are handmade in small batches by women artisan groups in India; see Fall ’17’s chikankari dress, which features slices of fabric cut and hand-stitched like 3-D embroidery, and the block-printed silks with natural dyes. Every season, Maximo explores new fabrics and finishes: “If there’s a technique I’m interested in, I basically travel to that area and work with the artisans,” she says. “I’ll base my collection off what they’re doing, as opposed to coming in with a preconceived idea of what it will look like. So I usually design on the road.” Also new for Fall ’17: chunky hand-knitted Alpaca sweaters made by artisans in the Andes mountains of Bolivia.

Slow and steady wins the race: Because artisan-made products take much longer to produce, Maximo says it’s difficult to work on a strict fashion calendar. But instead of scrapping the system and doing it her way, she simply works even further ahead. “I try to work a year in advance to develop fabrics,” she says. “That’s been the challenge. I was trained to work so fast and move through ideas so quickly, so it’s been a lesson to work on the DNA of Anaak and take the customer through slowly. With fast brands, there’s no DNA—you’re just reacting to trends.”

Fashion first, sustainability second: “Our success has been about product, not any kind of advertising or branding,” Maximo says. There’s a good chance some of her customers don’t know that Anaak’s clothes are made by artisans, but they still love the way they look and feel. On the other hand, there are probably lots of women who have been searching for something like Anaak—clothes that are elegant, simple, and effortless but also good for the earth and socially conscious. Now, they can stop searching.

Where to find it: Anaak is mainly stocked in specialty boutiques, including Bird Brooklyn and 180 in New York and Ron Herman in Los Angeles. You can find more information at AnaakCollection.com.