Innerwear, plant dyes, and Lenzing Tencel: understanding Anna Luckai’s Sanctuary Innerwear.
On this episode of EnvironMental Podcast, we got to welcome a member of the Living Brand Directory! The founder of Sanctuary Innerwear, Anna Luckai, absolutely blew us away by her process and her dedication to creating her innerwear line sustainably.
About Sanctuary Innerwear’s plant dyes
Anna grows them plants to dye with at her home! Who would have thought!?
She wants the world to know that making beautiful colors doesn’t need to involve chemicals. It does involve dedication and a commitment to foraging responsibly, though.
The plastics and chemicals in our clothing
“We are in a state of affairs where you can’t get clothes without plastic in them.” – Anna Luckai
We have talked about this before when we learned about the Fashion industry and the most sustainable fabrics. The long and short of it is that purely man-made fabrics are not good for you. They are made from petrochemicals and/or have toxic chemical processing procedures. Our clothing is against our skin all day long. Our skin is our largest organ. It both absorbs everything touching it and eliminates waste. Man-made clothing doesn’t breathe so not only does it leach petrochemicals, it also holds your naturally eliminated waste against your skin to be reabsorbed.
The problem with man-made clothing doesn’t stop there. Throughout the creation processes AND when you wash them, they leach petrochemicals and microplastics into waterways. This is dangerous to the environment, and it happens everyday, all day.
Choosing InnerWear
When Anna learned about petrochemicals and plastic in our clothing, she was appalled.
We are all concerned about eating from plastic containers to protect the inside of our bodies from petrochemicals, but what about placing plastic on our skin? We’re absorbing those same petrochemicals all day long! It felt unacceptable.
So Anna decided to flip the script with her line of clothing. If we can absorb chemicals that negatively impact our health through our skin, we can also absorb healing properties through our skin!
This gave Anna a new goal: to create a line that allows the wearer to add their garment to their wellness regime.
She doesn’t want to just create clothing that isn’t harmful to the body, Anna wants to create intentional clothing that is great for the wearer! So she chooses a sustainable fabric, makes her own plant dyes, and adds a handmade intentional hydrosol along with a washing soap so the wearer can re-infuse their garment with a beautiful intention. (WOW!)
Lenzing Tencel
Anna fell in love Lenzing Tencel during a fiber arts course. It is soft and lovely to work with so it feels absolutely fantastic against our most sensitive parts.
As Anna explains in this podcast, Lenzing Tencel is made from sustainably forested Eucalyptus with an environmentally friendly production process. This offers the perfect base for the wellness goals of Sanctuary Innerwear.
Sanctuary Innerwear’s Natural Plant Dyes
We are in love with the idea of adding clothing to our wellness routine, and when we asked Anna to elaborate, she blew us away.
The concept of utilizing herbs for dying a garment is an ancient Ayurvedic concept, but Anna decided to take it a step further. She did a deep dive into healing herbs, hydrosols, and natural plant dyes and decided to infuse those healing properties into her whole innerwear line!
Anna makes her own dyes from plants in her garden or responsibly forages them from the wild. Then, using a simple set up that anyone can try, she boils herbs to extract their hydrophilic health benefits. This she uses as an infusion for the clothes and includes it with each lingerie set. In this way, she makes clothes that can help a person be well.
Listen to the podcast above to hear more about Lenzing Tencel, Sanctuary Innerwear, and Natural Plant dyes.
And of course, if you want to get your own beautiful innerwear set, visit Sanctuary Innerwear.
