Boldwill

Netherlands

Ashkan & Erik

“We didn't come in with any preconceived notions. Things that were very weird in fashion and sportswear, we thought, okay, why not? Let's just try.”

Boldwill makes training clothes with as little plastic in them as somehow possible, and it exists because Erik and Ashkan wanted that and could not buy it. Erik and Ashkan were friends who trained together, and neither came out of the fashion industry. The question that started it was why synthetic sportswear smells. Reading further took them to microplastics and to health, and then to the plain finding that no plastic-free sportswear was on sale anywhere. Ashkan had just studied public administration, and both were in their early twenties when they began, under the name Iron Roots.

I have three questions for you, and something in return.

Three questions.

Selected pieces

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Boldwill

[PF50.Wood] T-Shirt - Pine

€58ledge price

Boldwill

EX.01 Natural Rubber Sports Sock …

[PF84.Wood] Biker Shorts

€72ledge price

Boldwill Clothing · Netherlands

The first three shirts shrank seven centimetres

Boldwill starts its sportswear at the fabric rather than the sketch: composition, knit and weight are settled first, and the garment is designed around it. Erik and Ashkan run the label from The Hague.

The vision was clear. plastic-free sportswear. Yet, it took two years to reach a first product. What arrived was three t-shirts that did not survive their first wash: seven centimetres shorter in the length afterwards, which is roughly the distance between a t-shirt and a crop top. Not a great start but the lack of experience in the clothing business also helped them to make bold moves. Instead of excluding certain materials, they asked themselves why not try?

Designed from the yarn up

The material comes before the garment and design here. What a piece is made of, how it is knitted and how heavy it hangs are decided at the start. The fabric is then found or developed to that specification, and the garment is drawn to what the fabric will do. Ashkan describes it as the exact reverse of the order design houses usually work in. With the PF47 shorts, the result is clear: a fabric made exclusively for this one garment, 54 per cent TENCEL Lyocell and 46 per cent TENCEL Modal, cuffs made from natural rubber and organic cotton, labels made from organic cotton, and prints using water-based inks.

The thread is where the method shows. The spec for the shorts lists sewing threads as 100 per cent TENCEL Lyocell, the same fibre as the cloth around them. A garment labelled by its body fabric is commonly stitched with polyester, and that yarn tends to go undeclared. Boldwill declares it.

Where the plastic stays

The range is not fully free of plastic, and the brand says so on its own pages. Leggings, sports bras, socks and thermal layers need stretch and shape retention that natural fibres, by the brand's account, cannot yet give, and the stated rule is that plastic fibres go in only where nothing else will do. The brand puts the figure at 95 per cent of the collection plastic free. But in the end they are true pioneers: for example, they developed the worldwide first fully plastic-free sport socks out of cotton and natural rubber and it holds as good as elastane would. From two friends with zero experience in the industry to frontrunners in the search for 100% plastic-free sportswear.