My story and my approach
I am Gaëlle, French designer and entrepreneur based in Berlin, Germany.
My passion for clothing and knitwear comes from the women in my family: from my mother who sewed ultra-colorful clothes in the 80s and who, when I was very little, introduced me to embroidery; and my Grandma who also taught me to knit from a very young age.
This is how harmless family transmissions shaped my destiny; knitting became the common thread that links my life to my origins.
After working for almost 10 years as a costume designer in cinema then as a designer for luxury designers and brands, including Christian Lacroix, Gaspard Yurkievich, Yves Saint Laurent, I moved to Berlin in 2017 with my partner to change my life. We started our family there and developed our entrepreneurial projects.
This change of environment and taking a step back from years spent developing models season after season led me to the obvious: continue to create yes, but no longer at any cost.
Woolly Mallow was born from this reflection on the impact of my passion and my work on our planet. How can we continue to create without our planet suffering?
I then wanted to create my knitwear brand and offer an alternative, a fashion more respectful of the environment, of those who make and consume it.
Changing fashion, one knit at a time
Woolly Mallow aims to be an actor of change, to bring a message of optimism in this raw world, and to show that another fashion is possible and that it can be stylish and mindful of its environmental and societal impact .
Woolly Mallow combines know-how, recycled natural materials, transmission and design in order to offer you stylish, timeless and colorful knits while ensuring to minimize its environmental impact.
Through the stories told and the experiences offered, Woolly Mallow wants to put people and the notions of time and know-how at the heart of your wardrobe.
Minimize your impact, maximize your style!
Woolly Mallow offers sweaters, cardigans and accessories in recycled natural knits produced in small quantities (drops) and on pre-order for a style that is both timeless and vibrant.
Uncompromising knitwear, conscientiously created and manufactured to dress several lives.
Sourcing, Recycling and Up-cycling
The desire to create my knitwear brand is not new, but creating my brand in 2024 in a catastrophic ecological context required real questions: How can I still create and sell clothes without destroying the planet and encouraging overconsumption? How can I minimize my environmental impact? How can we show that another fashion is possible?
Based on the observation that the most sustainable clothing is the one that is already in your wardrobe, I became interested in natural materials. This choice allows me to not draw on new natural resources, to transform textile “waste” and give them a second life.
Recycling is the action of recovering waste and reintroducing it, after treatment, into the production cycle. Our materials therefore come from this industrial process during which unused clothing and fabrics destined for destruction are reworked to produce a new material.
Upcycling is - in short - creating something new from something old, without transforming or deconstructing the material. At Woolly Mallow there are limited editions of “re-embellished” sweaters and cardigans. Each piece is unique and carries heritage and know-how.