Mountain Khakis confirms commitment to women
05/08/2011
Traditionally focused on ‘hips down’ the brand has said it is “particularly excited” that a majority of these new styles are tops, and that nearly half are for women.
“MK has been present in the women’s category since June, 2006 when we launched our women’s Alpine pant,” said natioal sales manager, Martin Wilkinson, on announcing the new collection. “As part of our growth strategy, we have invested in our women’s programme like never before, and are 100% committed to this channel. Our biggest statement for spring-summer 2012 is that MK is now in the women’s business.”
The MK product team worked on the new collection with John Moore and his team at The POP Studio, best known for its work on the Hollister apparel brand.
MK co-founder and director of product development, Noah Robertson, said: “Colours and silhouettes are truly MK, met with some ‘John Moore infusion’. It’s great for us to establish our design direction that is true to MK, then test it against John’s fashion insight. MK does not chase fashion and trend, but we are careful to stay germane to these patterns. Our style is mountain lifestyle, but relevant to all aspects of coastal, urban and western [trends]. MK relates to all sectors of Americana.”
On the technical side, Mountain Khakis is introducing two new fabrics. The Approach Collection features a jersey fabric made from Singtex’s S.Café product, polyester fabric based on post-consumer waste coffee grounds. The Fairway Collection also features a performance jersey knit fabric made from PET recycled plastic bottles, called Bionic.
Mountain Khakis said it had picked S.Café because it exhibits inherent, permanent properties including odour control, UV resistance and quick-dry. The S.Café lifecycle and patented process starts with the green coffee bean: the peabody. Spent coffee grounds from coffee shops are salvaged. Redirecting the waste away from the land-fill is an added eco benefit of the fibre.
Bionic uses an innovative, patented process to blend cotton and recycled PET. The Bionic lifecycle and patented process starts with discarded plastic bottles. Again, redirecting bottles away from the landfill is one of the eco-benefits to the process. As plastic bottles are recycled into PET the chips are transformed and melted into fibre strips. Spun together with cotton through a proprietary spinning process to create a dual layer Bionic Dpx yarn, the effect is a super-soft fabric surface of cotton and a core of recycled PET. Each MK Fairway shirt contains as many as 14 recycled PET bottles.
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