Photo by permission of Oliveira Textiles featuring the Anemone red fabric design
Art imitating life is how I would describe Oliveira Textiles’ newly designed sustainable fabric collection. Their new series, “Ocean,” is fluid, vibrant, and graceful reminding us of Dawn Oliveira’s inspiration, the ocean, in memory of her late fisherman father, who called the sea his office. The Ocean collection can be used for drapes, pillows, and light upholstery.
Each of us has a defining moment in our lives that causes us to diverge into an unexpected path. Unfortunately, the untimely death of Dawn’s father from cancer, changed twin sisters, Dawn Oliveira and Deborah Olson’s, lives forever. This moment in time fast forwarded Dawn’s dream to start her own design company, and brought her home to
Many of their family members had suffered bouts with cancer causing the sisters to questions whether or not the chemicals in their lives caused this horrific disease. They decided to create their fabrics from only sustainable sources such as hemp and organic cotton with dyes that were free of harmful chemicals. Hemp is fast growing and does not require any pesticides. Organic cotton is free of the harmful fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides that are normally used to grow cotton. Their first collection is made of hemp/organic cotton with low impact water based pigment dyes. No toxic chemicals here.
As a result of forming Oliveira Textiles, Dawn has found a new sense of freedom and joy away form the hustle and bustle of her beloved past designer life at Polo, Ralph Lauren, and Dana Buchmann. Finding balance with her family and her work in a place that inspires memories of her childhood on the beach in
As their business has grown, so has their environmental awareness. Simply producing sustainable designs with pigment water based dyes was not enough. They looked at the creation of the product from being to end and decided that they would seek Global Organic Textile Standards (GOTS) certification for their upcoming 2008 collection. In order to obtain certification, the end product must meet certain standards starting with how the raw materials of the product are harvested to the manufacturing and labeling methods used to assure the end consumer that the product was environmentally and socially responsibility produced.
In addition, the Company is working on making a GOTS standard fiber reactive fabric line that can be used for medium to heavy use upholstery. In addition, they will be adding to the Ocean series each year along with creating new collections. As Dawn states, they are committed to constantly improving the quality of their textiles from an environmental as well as consumer standpoint.
The website provides locations where the trade and consumers can purchase the Company’s fabric lines. The fabric retails for $120 to $140 per yard depending on the design. In addition, fabric can be purchased online at Near Sea Naturals and Urban Source Chicago.
However, if you like the pillows to the right of this paragraph, you can order them directly from the Company. They come in an 18 by 18 inch size.
When describing herself, Dawn used the words, committed, diligent, and endlessly creative. As she explained, doing what she loves totally motivates her, a lesson she learned form her father, who was passionate about his life work as a fisherman. Oliveira Textiles is committed to creating beautiful quality fabrics with the added bonus of being green. The designs of this young company are just like its muse, the ocean. Like waves, each collection will be unique with its own intensity.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Those are gorgeous patterns. I never would have expected something so cute to be eco-friendly.
Stefanie’s last blog post..Getting Relevant No No-Follow Links Quickly with Custom Search Engines
Stephanie-I have to agree with you about how beautiful they are. I happen to love fabric so come back again since I will be posting my eco-fabric finds soon. I have to re-upholster couches that look like they went through a war zone. I love the couches but the fabric was meant for people who rarely sit on their couches. I have 4 kids. Need I say more?
What is amazing about Oliveira Textiles is Dawn is an artist so her prints look like art work. If you don’t have a need to re-upholster or put up drapes, she makes pillow too. Thanks for posting! Anna