One clothing company is letting customers have their green and wear it too.
Organic clothing company RVL7 set up a stand near the Memorial Union on the Tempe campus Thursday, selling shirts made of organic cotton and bamboo that display social and sustainable messages.
"We want to be sustainable throughout and not just … [in] appearance,” RVL7's tour manager Reed Jones said. “We want to be a positive force in the world in promoting things such as peace or alternative energy so that way it’s sustainable."
Jones said he hopes his company will impact the marketplace, serving as a model to other companies for sustainable clothing production.
“We want the Levis, the Diesels, the Hanes of the world that are all apparel makers to change the way that they’re doing things,” Jones said. “We don’t think that people should have to choose between being cool and being green.”
Jones said ASU’s School of Sustainability and ranking in publications like Sierra Magazine, who recently praised ASU for its efforts towards curbing global warming, were a draw to sell merchandise on campus.
“To have those kinds of successes, you’re naturally going to have a population that’s passionate about sustainability,” Jones said. “Overall, it’s been a strong campus, so we thought it was a great place for us to go.”
RVL7 also recently stopped at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where students and environmental agencies showed enthusiasm for their products, Jones said.
Jones said that before touring college campuses, the company spent the summer selling shirts at summer music festivals like All Points West in New Jersey; the Mile High Music Festival in Denver, Colo.; and the Bumbershoot Festival in Washington.
“We really kind of put ourselves everywhere,” he said.
Max Mendoza, a marketing sophomore who works for ASU’s Programming and Activities Board, said he jumped in to help RVL7 on campus after learning about them in August at the Outside Lands Music Festival in San Francisco.
“From the moment I heard about this, that it was going to be an eco-friendly shop and that it was supporting sustainability and social changes, I got really excited,” Mendoza said. “I told them ASU’s the first school to have the School of Sustainability, so it’s the perfect fit for them. I really put my passion into this store. It’s a great success.”
Architecture senior Pablo Ramirez liked RVL7’s shirt designs.
“They looked like comfortable clothes, and the messages are cool,” Ramirez said.
Architecture senior Alejandro Cabrales said the shirts’ logos and philosophy of recycling and peace appealed to him.
Meghan Stern and Anna Cussert, both marketing sophomores, visited the stand and said they liked the shirts’ unique designs as well as their growing status in popular culture.
“It’s not the typical peace sign,” Stern said. “There’s more to the shirt.”
“Especially since all the celebrities are getting into [the shirts],” Cussert said.
Students who attended the booth were also able to record their rules for sustainable living on video, which Jones said would appear on the redesigned RVL7 Web site.
Jones said Joe and Amy Tomlinson founded RVL7 after a shirt with a negative message inspired them to do just the opposite: promote a clothing line with both positive designs and methods of manufacturing.
Jones said RVL7's name means both "revel," to celebrate, and "seven" similar to "24/7.”
With its line of shirts, he said the company plans to promote sustainability in daily life.
“[We want to] celebrate sustainability every day,” Jones said. “Make it part of our lifestyle, be excited about it, make it cool and not just something we feel obligated to do.”
Reach the reporter at joseph.v.tuccillo@asu.edu.
