This Brand Wants You to Compost Its Clothes

The clothes hanging in Lydia Wendt’s loft atelier in Los Angeles’ Fashion District shimmer in earthy tones: an orange sleep set dyed with California poppies, a coral lounge set colored with madder root, undyed tees in off-white cotton. Pointing to the dark disk of a dried sunflower, Wendt explains, “The Navajo used this to dye fabric black, and I’m trying to find a rich natural black.” Nearby, a dried indigo branch pinned to a white pegboard hints at her latest experiment, naturally dyed blue athletic wear. Across oversized worktables, swatches in shifting shades of lavender and plum suggest the studio is part dye lab, part textile archive, part manifesto.

Wendt, founder of California Cloth Foundry, is trying to build a fashion system that behaves more like a healthy ecosystem than a conventional apparel business. Her garments are made from American-grown fibers, dyed largely with plants instead of petrochemicals, and designed to be compostable at the end of their life cycle. Her goal is not to make clothing “less bad,” but to create what she calls regenerative fashion: garments that can ultimately return nutrients to the soil rather than accumulate as waste.

“One solution while we’re trying to readjust our consumerism and our values around [overconsumption] is to create things that can go back to the earth without any detrimental effects,” she says.

Founded in 2014, California Cloth Foundry is part of a broader reckoning with fashion’s environmental cost. The fashion industry produces more than 100 billion pieces of clothing every year, generating up to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions and roughly 20 percent of global wastewater annually, with textile dyeing and treatment among the major culprits. Synthetic fibers derived from fossil fuels now dominate clothing production, contributing to microplastic pollution and mounting waste streams. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation estimates that the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or incinerated every second.

Against that backdrop, regenerative fashion has become a growing movement among designers, farmers and textile advocates seeking to reconnect clothing to soil health, human well-being and regional manufacturing.

Wendt argues that we should give clothes the same consideration as the food we eat: “The skin is our largest organ and absorbs 64 percent of the chemicals from what you wear into your body.”

Her path toward nontoxic clothing began inside the mainstream fashion industry. Wendt started modeling as a teenager while growing up in upstate New York farm country, where her family gardened and grew much of their own food. Today, wearing no makeup and leaving her gray-streaked hair undyed, her tall slim figure and high cheekbones are reminders of a successful career. After studying textile design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, she worked with major brands like her “fashion god” Issey Miyake, Tom Ford, Calvin Klein and Bloomingdales. She became increasingly uneasy with the influx of cheap synthetic petrochemical materials like polyester and chemically intensive manufacturing.

Wendt started seriously looking into less toxic clothing when she became a mother. At the time, the U.S. mandated fire retardants in children’s clothing, which were later found to be carcinogenic. So Wendt imported her children’s clothes from Europe or sewed them herself.

At 39, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgery and chemotherapy — an experience she describes as a turning point. “There was absolutely no way I was going to use any toxic petrochemicals anymore,” she says, now dressed in her own apparel, an organic cotton striped tee layered beneath a heathered cardigan in naturally colored cotton and undyed white shorts.

She started teaching sustainable fashion design at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, experimenting with her students by foraging mushrooms and native shrubs as dyes. The experience deepened her frustration with the lack of transparency in fashion supply chains. Labels may describe garments as “sustainable” or “organic,” while leaving consumers in the dark about dyes, coatings, finishing agents or synthetic blends.

“Even cotton that is GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard)-certified can contain up to 30 percent of other fabrics,” Wendt says. “Plus, most dyes and coatings are petrochemicals. People are buying an organic shirt thinking they’re doing something healthy, but it’s shiny and black and has white print on top, all of which is from petrochemicals. That’s what’s touching your skin.”

Oekotex textile safety standards “don’t mean it’s 100 percent natural and non-toxic” either, Wendt explains. “The certification only means that the toxicity is below the level deemed toxic for human wearing. It doesn’t mean the dyes are natural or not causing cancer.”

She has thus come to reject the label “sustainable.” “Sustainability is not about healthy regeneration of a system or a human being or the environment,” she says. “More often than not, it’s about finances.”

Regenerative fashion, by contrast, starts with growing natural fibers with regenerative agriculture, which focuses on rebuilding soil health and biodiversity, sequestering carbon and restoring ecosystems.

Wendt founded California Cloth Foundry after collaborating with Fibershed and The North Face on the uber-successful Backyard Hoodie Project, a 2014 experiment aimed at creating apparel through a highly localized supply chain. Today, she only buys cotton grown in the U.S., mostly in New Mexico, Arizona and California. She hand-picked the mills that spin the cotton into yarn, emphasizing her direct relationships with farmers, knitters, dyers and sewing contractors.

That regional supply chain comes at a premium. Domestic manufacturing costs her at least 40 percent more than overseas production. But Wendt argues that proximity allows for accountability. “It’s like farm to table,” she says. “People have found value in restaurants being transparent about where everything comes from and sourcing locally. Clothing is heading in that direction.”

The company’s most distinctive work happens in dyeing. Instead of the usual petrochemicals and harsh chemicals like formaldehyde, Wendt uses natural enzymes and botanical pigments derived from marigold, California poppy, madder root, chestnut, valerian, elderberry, indigo and logwood. The resulting colors are softer and less uniform than synthetic dyes — a characteristic Wendt considers essential rather than problematic. “Good food never looks the same; every apple is different,” she says. “The fabric is alive, too.”

Natural dyeing requires significantly more labor and technical adaptation than petroleum-based dye systems developed for industrial scale. Mills accustomed to standardized chemical formulas often struggle with the variability of plant-based color. Retailers, meanwhile, expect exact shade repetition and low prices.

“The market is just like the plastic industry,” Wendt says. “[Mainstream fashion labels are] flooding the market with cheap stuff.”

Still, California Cloth Foundry has developed a loyal following. Wendt says many initially discover the brand through concerns about sensitive skin, synthetic fabrics or environmental health. “If you’re wearing clothing that’s really close to its origin, your immune system doesn’t have to be hyper-alert all the time,” she says. “So it can live and heal itself. That’s regeneration, too.”

What sets Wendt apart is how far she pushes that principle. Her clothes are so nontoxic that customers can compost them in their backyards. Cutting room scraps are collected and spun into new yarn. Wendt ships orders in compostable cellulose bags; even the tags are made from textile waste and printed with vegetable ink. According to a feasibility study by the California Product Stewardship Council (CPSC), which helped test compost created from fabric scraps, food waste, wood chips and manure, the resulting soil demonstrated strong nutrient levels and above-average water retention.

For Wendt, the experiment represents a tangible demonstration of regenerative fashion’s central premise: that textiles could function as biological nutrients instead of landfill waste.

The concept stands in stark contrast to the dominant economics of global apparel production with its synthetic fibers, low-cost labor and rapid production cycles. Wendt knows California Cloth Foundry will not overturn that system overnight. Consumers conditioned by decades of ultra-cheap apparel often struggle to understand why responsibly made garments cost more. But Wendt hopes her pieces will outlast trends, even generations, and eventually set standards for a more eco-conscious industry.

Her work challenges the industry’s operating logic. “I just think living more simply,” she says, “and valuing what you’re purchasing and learning — that’s really important.”