COZE AARHUS

WE ARE COZE AARHUS

We are COZE AARHUS, a conscious clothing company committed to doing our very best. We are here for women all over the world to be able to achieve a sense of well-being through our women’s apparel brand LAURIE.

 

However, bringing wearable well-being into the world is not enough. We must use our voice and influence to make the fashion world better too. Our planet and the people producing our clothes should be treated respectfully, and we’re dedicated to leaving the smallest fashion footprint possible while creating timeless wardrobe essentials.

BACK IN THE 80S

The storyline of our company goes back to 1987 – an era with much less fast fashion, without the massive climate changes of today – and an era with a total lack of today’s body positivity movement.

 

It was during this pocket of time that Rie and Jens Nygaard launched LAURIE, a women’s apparel brand acknowledging and celebrating that every woman is unique, not only in terms of personality, but also in terms of body proportions, body size and body shape.

FOUR CORE VALUES

Instead of only creating clothes for the few living up to the narrow beauty ideals of the 80s, Rie Design was founded to give a much larger group of women the opportunity to look and feel their best through contemporary and comfortable clothes suited for a long life.

 

By embracing women of all kinds and saluting diversity, Rie Design really hit the right note. The same goes for the values that have been characterizing our brand since day 1: Contemporary designs, perfect fits, high quality, and decency. We can’t imagine a world where these four characteristics won’t fit, and so, they have been woven into every single one of our collections since 1987.

BECOMING ENLIGHTENED

Back in our early days well-known designations of today such as REACH, CSR and ESG didn’t exist in the broader clothing conversation. In fact, they just didn’t exist, period.

 

Nevertheless, in retrospect, we know today that the conditions of the farmers in the cotton fields and the seamstresses in the garment factories should have had everyone’s attention much sooner. The same goes for the toxic fumes and chemicals floating the rivers nearby the worker, the massive overproduction and the loads of deadstock being burned.

NEW BUSINESS OWNERS

In the meantime, alongside a fashion industry spinning out of control, something exciting took place at COZE AARHUS. After 18 years of creating wardrobe essentials for a wide range of women Rie and Jens Nygaard decided to step back and hand over their business to Lena Trend and Henrik Hansen. Both Lena and Henrik each had 20 years’ experience in different commercial trade businesses, the field of fashion was completely new to them.

However, thriving on challenges and always being eager to learn, this lack of textile knowledge worked out in their favor from day one, as they always managed to let their highly developed business sense rule. The new business owners took over a company of employees with a much deeper understanding of the fashion industry than Lena and Henrik themselves.

THE POWER OF FIT AND QUALITY

This made them enter COZE AARHUS with a humbleness and curiosity contributing to an organization without the sharp edges of hierarchy. They never considered all these talented and experienced people employees – these people were, of course, colleagues. And they were full of important insights for Lena and Henrik to delve into. Soon to be revealed, the exact same thing turned out to be the case for LAURIE’s loyal customers. 

 

A few months after their takeover, the new owners participated in their first fashion exhibition ever. The year was 2005, the place was Düsseldorf, and the amount of unique fashion brands was overwhelming. Strolling around, meeting and greeting lots and lots of LAURIE’s customers (the shop owners), one question kept coming up: “You are not going to change the fit or the quality, are you?” By the time Lena and Henrik headed back home, the power of fit and quality had become a core product value for them.

Coze Aarhus

A CRUCIAL CALL

Entering a whole new field of business with its own rhythm and characteristics often comes with a steep learning curve. That was also the case for Lena and Henrik, but the first couple of years all these new insights, new skills and becoming familiar with the manufacturing of clothing just felt exciting – and safe. However, something was about to change. It all started with a call from the company’s label supplier asking an important question: “Do you have REACH under control?”

 

REACH is the name of the EU regulation on chemicals. It wasn’t introduced until 2007, so until the label supplier asked the question, Lena and Henrik had never heard of REACH (an acronym for the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals). The reason for introducing this regulation was an increasing need to protect human health and the climate from chemicals in the industry. The label supplier’s call turned out to be crucial. Looking back, it’s clear that it became the starting point of the thoughtful journey COZE AARHUS has been on ever since.

REACHING FOR A NEW NORMAL

At COZE AARHUS the new EU regulation made sense from the start. As the use of chemicals was increasing globally in the fashion industry, new ways to protect the consumer was in order. From today’s point of view, it’s a bit hard to grasp that less than 20 years ago we didn’t give the chemicals in the industry much thought – if any at all. Afterall, our skin is our largest open organ, and so, in hindsight it’s obvious that every piece of clothing touching the skin should be completely safe to wear.

At COZE AARHUS, the call turned on a collective research spirit. We wanted to become familiar with every single step of the manufacturing process, and we wanted to make sure that putting on a piece of LAURIE clothing didn’t just equal a sense of well-being; it should also equal safety. We decided to set sail for a new normal in the fashion industry. Someone had to. 

FIRST MOVERS ON OEKO-TEX®

Without hesitation, we started scouting for OEKO-TEX® certified suppliers (because the purpose with this certification is to ensure users’ health, it is a 3rd party, REACH-compliant and can be instantly validated online). It made us feel like explorers trying to make a way through a newly discovered field, as the OEKO-TEX® certified suppliers appeared to be a very rare species at the time. Today, we are pleased that these suppliers are the rule rather than the exception among most European suppliers – that was not at all the case when we started our search seventeen years ago.

 

We decided to find more OEKO-TEX® certified suppliers every year, and in 2016 LAURIE achieved its own OEKO-TEX® certification as the first women’s brand in Scandinavia. Along with a deep sense of meaningfulness came a sense of finally having completed a marathon. The OEKO-TEX® certification process turned out to be very long and very time-consuming, but with the insights gained in our entire value chain and with the health-conscious clothing we were now able to offer, every second spent has been worth the effort.

THE BUSINESS MODEL TRANSFORMED

A crisis can close doors – and can open new ones. The financial crises in 2009-10 was no exception. Realizing how many products in our collection were classic and long-lasting in both styling and materials, we chose to help our customers financially by carrying stock of the best sold, basic models, which we knew would stay in our product range in collections to come. This way, our risk made commercial sense, and it enabled our customers to buy only what they needed – no more, no less. Since then, the model has only benefitted everyone – suppliers, producers, customers, and us.

 

And we are proud to say that we still have garments in our product range, which were designed by Rie in the late 80s. Not because they are fashionable or modern now, but because they are wardrobe favourites for many women still.

A WIDER PERSPECTIVE

In the meantime, in 2014, we joined a year-long project: “CSR in SME’s: From principle to practical” – another milestone in our business understanding, because we realized that a strategy on our corporate responsibility journey was needed to set goals for everyone involved. Furthermore, we started to realize that a holistic approach to being a business was essential for our understanding of true responsibility. In the making of textiles, chemicals are important to control – from health and environmental reasons, but so are the decent working conditions for people making our clothes. We learned that each decision must be based on responsibility for the environment affected, the people involved, and the money made – and that none of the three can stand alone.

All the knowledge and insights resulted in many, rather bold, decisions with huge impact:

 

 

  • We joined the amfori BSCI, a 3rd party organization, making social audits in the factories, ensuring decent working conditions.
  • We joined the UN Global Compact, a global network of companies and organizations aligning strategies and operations on human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption.
  • We chose to focus on Sustainable Development Goals 8 and 12
  • We decided to produce only in Europe.
  • We only produce in factories, we have visited.
  • We always give production to the supplier, who made the initial salesmen samples.
  • 70% of our styles in each collection must be relevant and durable for a minimum of 3 comparable seasons (summer or winter).
  • We have made our Material Guide, as a guide to ourselves and to our consumers.
  • We have defined policies about Child Labour and Anti-Corruption, to guide us and all our partners.
HQ

THE NEXT LEVEL

We got more curious. What would it take to make products with a holistic approach? We had heard about the Nordic Ecolabel certification, one of the world’s toughest holistic certifications. Sportsmanship came over us, and after a year of documentation and choices together with our supplier, samples and more documentation, in 2018 we obtained the Nordic Ecolabel certification on a group of jeans products. It felt good.

 

Parallel to this, we also learned that cotton is a dirty crop. From an environmental and human perspective, growing conventional cotton is an industry with a one-sided focus on profit. The environment suffers severely, and so do the people involved.

Viscose is a cellulose based fiber, made from trees. We also learned that deforestation is another structural challenge of our industry, so when a fiber supplier introduced to us viscose made based on trees from replated forestry (FSC or PEFC-certified), the transformation process began…

Industrial washing machines based on new technology were introduced to us. E-Flow nano technology using substantially less water, chemicals and energy in the washing process made sense to us. And the impact could be measured.

 

From 2019-22 we transformed from the use of conventional cotton to organic cotton. From use of conventional viscose to EcoVero / Birla viscose. From conventional washing methods to eFlow. And from 2022 onwards, these have been and are our choices – because they only make holistic sense.

 

Achieving ambitious goals makes us want more. The global conversation is more holistic than ever, and we want to follow, being a company as a force for good. Therefore, the next step for us is applying for a B Corp certification latest in 2024. In preparation, we started measuring our CO2 emission, identifying our highest risks in our everyday work following the OECD’s guidelines and much more.

 

 

Why? Because years ago, we promised ourselves that whatever we do, it’s got to feel right.

Designed in Denmark

Made in Europe