In This Article:
When actress Lyndie Benson founded Bleusalt in 2017, production for her first fabric—a modal—fell apart, both literally and figuratively.
The retailer of the capsule collection backed out, and Benson, who admittedly “didn’t know anything about anything” at that time, was stuck with an inferior product. So, she went down a “rabbit hole” to find a more sustainable solution and ultimately ran into industry behemoth Lenzing.
More from Sourcing Journal
“I was on my own with this collection and the fabric that I made it out of basically fell apart, it was shedding, but I had already jumped in the pool,” Benson told Sourcing Journal. “I went down a rabbit hole and somehow found Lenzing and flew to New York; I needed [its] fabric because I wasn’t interested in something that wasn’t completely OK for the environment.”
Now, the Malibu-based brand is debuting Bleusalt Lite: a micro-modal jersey material made from Lenzing’s modal fibers derived from beechwood trees in Austria. The new fabric offers the same softness that the Meghan Markle-approved brand is known for—and has made $50 million in sales from—now with a lighter and breezier feel.
“I just like to be conscious; I really love the environment,” Benson said. “I just would not want to create something that wasn’t good for the environment—just for my own consciousness—that wasn’t a worthwhile thing to do.”
Bleusalt’s fabric choices have been a “keystone” of the sustainable luxury brand’s narrative since its inception. Everything is made with Lenzing fibers in the United States using Oeko-Tex certified dyes. And every other step of the process is local to California, minimizing its carbon footprint. The knitting, cutting and sewing are handled in Vernon, while shipping and packaging take place in Glendale.
“I try not to have waste, but it’s hard—some things get hard and you have to make hard decisions,” Benson said, referencing a period when Bleusalt used reusable canvas bags for packaging. The idea was, she said, that they could be reused for produce shopping or packing. However, customers started expressing concerns that they were wasteful.
“And besides that, something you thought was inexpensive when you have a lower volume of customers [sometimes] turns into something really expensive later,” Benson continued. “And we were there with the canvas bags.”