kleinbasel for the Climate Award 2025
Fashion with attitude since 2000
What exactly qualifies kleinbasel for the Climate Award 2025?
🌿 Sustainable business model
We create slow fashion instead of fast fashion: we don’t mass-produce, but small series, designed and developed in Basel, manufactured in nearby Europe and Switzerland.
Short production routes: Reduction of environmental impact due to short and planned routes.
Socially fair production: we maintain long-term partnerships with our manufacturers, employees and suppliers, no wage dumping.
2 times a year a small series is sewn in Basel by the apprentices of the Couture Ateliers.
♻️ Circular economy & resource conservation
We use overstock fabrics for the kleinbasel collection: We reuse high-quality surplus fabrics from major brands.
Utilization of leftovers: Fabric and leather remnants are used for further small accessories, custom-made items for customers, repairs or are passed on to clothing design students, fabric stores or schools.
Packaging & display: reuse of packaging and clothes hangers. Sustainable reuse/recycling and upcycling of old store furniture.
Decorative materials for shop windows and displays are exchanged with other stores and nothing new is purchased.
Shop window lighting reduced to a minimum.
We sell our stock items in our studio store at very favorable conditions depending on the season.
We don’t throw away clothes or bags.
👗 Longevity & repair
Lifetime Repair Service: Repair service for bags and clothing.
Alteration-friendly design: dress styles are designed so that they can be easily adjusted and altered.
Care instructions: Washing tests and ecological care recommendations are communicated during the sales talk and are sewn onto the inside of the garments using carlabels.
We hold occasional clothes swap events and encourage our customers to bring their worn kleinbasel clothes to the second-hand shop. This means that future generations can continue to wear and appreciate our designs.
🧵 Education & knowledge transfer
Internships as further training: For 25 years, we have been offering internships for clothing design apprentices and sensitizing them to sustainable fashion and circular production processes during their internship.
With the seasonal production of small series by apprentices from the Couture Ateliers, we promote the next generation of professionals.
Studio tours & transparency: information about design, development and production of sustainable fashion, pricing policy, differentiation from fast fashion and ultra-fast fashion.
🛍️ Sales & customer service
Store & online store: Sustainable sales conditions (e.g. bundled shipping, proportionate postage costs for customers and kleinbasel), intensive, honest and authentic sales and styling advice, therefore no bad purchases.
Products can only be returned and exchanged in exchange for a shopping voucher, return shipment subject to a charge.
One-off & custom-made products: Tailor-made dresses and collections to customer specifications using existing fabrics and cuts.
🧑💼 Corporate fashion with a purpose
Sustainable corporate clothing: development of corporate wear according to the same values as the kleinbasel collection.
🌱 Digitalization & environmental awareness
Paperless processes: Fully digitized company, pattern development on CAD, fabric-saving cutting thanks to CAD, ERP with connected POS system
Ecological use of resources: recycled paper and waste, sustainable use of office equipment,
Less use of PET, we motivate our young team to drink from their own drinking bottles instead of aluminum cans, PET bottles and to-go paper cups.
Green backyard: habitat for wild bees, birds and insects in the middle of Basel.
We therefore do our very best in all possible processes and matters to implement environmental impact, circular economy and sustainability in our textile environment.
Vote for us, thank you very much!
