Sustainability

Changing Lives and saving the planet, Stitch by Stitch

On a mission to redefine luxury fashion crafting minimalist signature pieces from the finest, natural silks, proudly made in London with an uncompromising approach to sustainability and aesthetics, leaving no stone unturned. An ethos at the heart of everything we do, from the flattering cuts of our dresses, to zero waste by upcycling leftover silks into beautiful new-born baby clothes for refugees for AFRIL and Cornerstone Baby Bank and workwear tops for Smartworks.

That's not all, we are plastic-free too, with GOTs certified care labels, organic cotton packaging and a luxury plant silk certified by the GRS (Global Recycle Standard), European Vegetarian Union, And OEKO-Tex 100 Standard. All fabrics bulk bought to reduce our carbon footprint. Committed to always delivering exceptional customer service.

Best Bridalwear Brand at Marie Claire Sustainability Awards 2023 and 2022, for two years in a row

We were awarded Best Bridalwear Brand in the Marie Claire Sustainability Awards 2022 and 2023 recognising our commitment to creating a sustainable and regenerative brand. Read more about our 2022 award here. and 2023 award go here.

We are so happy to be recognised for our dedication to our work to support charities and reducing our waste. It’s such an honour to receive this from Marie Claire. Our mission is to prove that you can be environmentally friendly and fully sustainable without compromising on quality or price or design. And we didn’t want to stop there – we also wanted to empower women and help communities as well. 

Mary Fellowes, sustainability expert and Marie Claire Awards Judge, had this to say about us:

Here’s how we create our sustainable wedding dresses.

Zero Fabric Waste

We never throw anything away. Instead of disposing of leftover fabric from our dresses, we collect the off cuts to use in other projects, which reduces our fabric waste. We regularly donate to charities Smartworks and AFRIL and Cornerstone Baby Bank.

Natural Undyed Silks

The couture silk we use in our dress is undyed and in its most natural state, which uses less harmful chemicals. As a natural fabric, silk is also biodegradable.

Plant Silk

We spent a long time searching for the best silk replica made from plants that would echo the high-quality fabrics that we are known for. We found it in a natural, plant-based material that contains circular viscose and Cupro. Derived from sustainable wood and pulp from controlled sources, it’s certified by GRS (Global Recycle Standard), European Vegetarian Union and Oeko-Tex 100 standard, making it super sustainable and vegan. See the Elsa Sass dress made from this fabric, a slip-style dress with a very subtle floral pattern.

Made In London

 Our dresses are made in the heart of London, and we have been working with the same ateliers for over ten years now.

Made-to-Order

As all our dresses are made-to-order, which means we are not mass produced and do not hold unnecessary stock. It also means all Sabina Motasem dresses are truly unique for our brides.

Smart Works – Women’s Charity

Looking after the planet, also means helping communities – and we’ve found a way that allows us to do this. Each of our dresses not only helps reduce the impact on our planet, but also helps empower other women. The off-cut leftover fabric usually gets thrown away in a normal production situation – but not at Sabina Motasem! We transform them into workwear, which we regularly donate to the Smart Works, a charity that helps to empower marginalised women to gain more confidence and find a job. Read more about our donations to Smartworks.

AFRIL - A Women's Refugee Charity in South East London

Another way we are helping to support communities is through AFRIL. Each of our dresses's leftovers also gets turned into beautiful baby clothes, like rompers, dresses and adorable booties for the vulnerable refugee women who AFRIL support in South East London. Read more about AFRIL info.

Cornerstone baby bank, East London

We're working with a local new charity Baby Bank Cornerstone in East London's Leytonstone and making baby rompers and dresses for refugees and newborn baby mamas in urgent need. We're proud to add them to the two other charities we're donating transformed offcuts into beautiful baby clothes items to – Smartworks Charity and AFRIL. Read more about our new charity here –  upcycling more off-cuts for new baby charity

Brides Do Good – A Boutique Helping to End Child Marriage

We donate older samples from previous collections and discontinued styles to the wedding boutique Brides Do Good in Kensington, London. For every £3 spent with Brides do Good, they then give £1 to their charity partners who focus on empowering women and girls and ending child marriage. Brides Do Good have managed to raise enough funds from the sales of our samples we've donated, to support a year of school for over 150 girls at risk of early marriage.  Read more about our donations to Brides Do Good.

Donating Scraps to Phoebe English

Following our win at the Marie Claire Sustainability awards in 2022, we reached out to the winner of the Best Fashion Brand award, Phoebe English who make beautiful patchwork pieces. After we've made the tops for Smartworks and the baby clothes for AFRIL, we are still left with bits we're not sure what to do with, so we like to donate these to Phoebe, so this is the perfect solution! We’re pleased to hear that the studio was delighted to receive these. To find out more go to this blog. 

Organic Cotton Garment Covers

We have designed and created our own woven garment covers made right here in London from deadstock GOTs certified cotton after searching for an eco and organic alternative. The ones we were using were not organic, made from non-natural fabrics and had lots of plastic. Our new ones have no plastic and have pretty ties instead and have a vegan stamp with our logo, with sustainable inks. We wanted an alternative. Not only will it work out loads cheaper than the organic options we were finding, it means we will use less carbon too from shipping pre-made bags in from places like China. And they look feel so much more premium.

Organic and Recycled Packaging

It’s not only our dresses which are planet-friendly, but all our packaging is too! Our dresses are packaged in cornstarch plastic bags, which are as strong as plastic versions, but are fully biodegradable and compostable. Each of the boxes that we use to despatch our dresses in are made from eco-friendly, high quality kraft board. Made from 70% recycled material, this packaging is recyclable.

Eco-Friendly Supplies for the Studio

All the supplies from hand-wash to the toilet paper has been sourced from fellow Marie Claire winnres the Bower Collective, Stone Minimart and Who Gives a Crap. All the dried flowers have been saved from the founder's own wedding last year and displayed at the studio too. All furniture is bought second hand and vintage, and upcycled.

Sewing + Fashion Workshops

Community is very important to us, so we planned a series of sewing workshops at ethical store in East London, Stone Minimart where under-privileged went for free. We made hair accessories, we donated leftover beaded samples from earlier collections to good homes, taught how to make fabric flowers and Christmas decorations. We've also had workshops where Sabina the founder has taught fashion illustration and a little bit about the fashion industry to anyone wishing to work in the industry. To find out more read - Let's get crafty, Christmas Decoration workshop

Less Carbon Footprint

We have also builk bought all of our fabrics for both collections, so that we don't need things shipped on a regular basis to reduce our carbon footprint. It also helps us to avoid all the many delays that other bridal boutiques experience with shipping from abroad and that Brexit has caused. This has enabled us to be able to respond quickly and efficiently to any short-term orders.

Natural Dyers to Dye Bride's Wedding Dresses

For many years we have been unable to find any eco friendly dyers who can dye sustainably without damaging our environment or the dress due to the harmful chemicals and high temperatures. We're currently in the process of testing out various methods of natural dyeing with our signature heavy silk crepe. We will be sharing new contacts of natural dyers who would be able to transform your dress so you can wear it again after the big day. Please note however, there is always a risk when dyeing, as it can in some cases distort by varying degrees of shrinkage between the outer heavy silk crepe and the lighter weight lining silk. Dyeing your dress is at the owner's own risk.

If you're crafty and creative, and you fancy learning all about natural dyeing yourself, this is a great instagram profile to follow who's written a best-selling book: Rebecca Desnos. We've also run a recent blog about some of the interesting ideas on hammering flowers and subtle natural dyeing techniques - read this blog article – Everything you need to know about naturally dyeing your wedding dress.

Upcycle Your Wedding Dress

Our dresses have always been ideal for upcycling dresses. We have always referred our brides to experienced and qualitfied seamstresses. Ideas of how dresses can be upcycled include shortening the dress to the knee with the bottom hem part transformed into a separate piece like a skirt; or if you go for something like the Elsa Gold dress in a warm champagne colour, simply trim away the train for the utlimate red carpet style dress perfect for any black tie event. The weddngi dress can go way beyond the big day. It can also be combined with subtlely tinting the dress in a light colour too - we're currently looking at various methods for this and will be able to recommend places we can refer brides to.

Eco-Friendly Care Labels

We have just replaced all of our care labels that were made from the synthetic polyester base ones to these organic GOTS certified ones we've personally designed as clear as we could with sustainable water inks. too.

What We Are Working On...

While we are underway with our progress to be sustainable, there are still some steps we need to take to be fully eco-friendly. We believe in being transparent about this and are working hard to improve some elements, so we can create fully sustainable wedding dresses here in the UK.

Eco-Friendly Back Neck and Size

Currently these are organza-based high-definition printed labels. We are currently looking for a replacement cotton or linen style label as natural fabrics like these are more sustainable than manufactured fabrics. However, we will only be switching once we’ve used the organza labels up as we truly believe that it’s better to use what we have than buy new.

Carbon Off-Setting

We're currently looking at ways we can engage a third-party to help us become carbon neutral and offset each of our dresses and sales.

We are constantly reviewing our policies, so if you think there's anything that we've missed please let us know and we'll look into it.