In many ways, fashion has never been better. For many designers and craftspeople, the countless style genres and fashion trends, fabric and material variations, sustainable alternatives, as well as size inclusivity, all have paved a new way for them to create their very own niche, and in turn, have made the way clothing is made forever changed. Intimate wear is no exception.
For Rachael Calvert, a specific niche she has found is lingerie for bustier women that combines style, function, and sustainability seamlessly and beautifully. Having lived through the dilemma of not having enough options to choose from as a busty woman herself, Rachael created Marvell Lane, a fashion brand based in Byron Bay, Australia.
Marvell Lane initially specialized in intimate wear and has now expanded to swimwear and garments, all of which, even from the start, are created with natural fibers and recycled fabrics. As a further show of their commitment to sustainability, Marvell Lane also uses equally sustainable packaging from noissue to ship their special products in.
Read on to learn more about Marvell Lane!
Tell us a bit about your brand!
We're a fashion, lingerie and swimwear company who caters specifically to the D+ cups market - think women with smaller frames and fuller busts.
I founded the brand in 2017 as a fellow fuller busted woman who struggled to find swimwear that not only fit, but which I also loved. From there we've evolved into lingerie and fashion, two other areas in which I also struggled to find pieces to fit and which are becoming the biggest part of our business!
Our core focus is ensuring our customers experience a great fitting garment, enjoy their pieces and most importantly, feel better about their fuller bust which has no doubt caused them grief over the years of shopping!
Tell us about the design for your packaging and how you’re using them?
From the outset, sustainability has been an important focus for my business and I don't just mean that flippantly. For example, our garments are either made of a natural fiber or a derivative of a natural fiber, or if they're not, then the polyester or nylon fiber is made from recycled yarn. Why does this detail relate to noissue?
Well, if I'm approaching the construction of my garments with sustainable choices in mind, then I will use the same approach when it comes to packaging my product. None of my items are shipped from my manufacturer wrapped in individual garments bags, so our plastic footprint remains relatively tiny.
Then once I'm sending my parcels out to my customers, I want them to have no plastic in their packaging, but the packaging we do use has no plastic component and is either fully recyclable or fully compostable and made from recycled or sustainably sourced components (all the tissue paper, cards, etc).
Not only that, it looks chic, elevated and as the first touch point with most of my customers, it makes them feel good when they receive a parcel that looks premium. It shows that we value them as a customer and that we really value the product that we're putting out into the world.
What made noissue a good fit for your packaging?
This question was largely answered above, however, there are specific features of using noissue that appeals to us as a small business, namely:
- There is an element of "DIY" with your ordering process which makes it accessible - we don't necessarily need to engage a costly graphic designer to design all of our packaging for us, we can simply customize your designs - which are already lovely - to our brand. You see this with our tissue paper specifically. Sometimes having to engage an external party to design things for you can be cost prohibitive, so this is a brilliant feature.
- Your minimums are not outrageous. Until the last couple of years, I used branded stickers and sourced my own premium (yet unbranded) tissue paper because, until I came across noissue, I couldn't meet the minimums required for other packaging businesses. And when you're trialing packaging and what works for you, having to order extremely large quantities is risky for a small business who may need to make changes as they evolve. This also means we can change our card design regularly - which we do depending on the product we've launched.
- The recycled and recyclable elements of all your products goes without saying.
Marvell Lane's noissue products: