A CONSCIOUS JOURNEY TOWARDS A MORE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

Naja Munthe founded the brand back in 1994. After finished the Danish Design School, she wanted to find a way to express her love for creativity, art, fashion and her entrepreneurial mindset. Creating MUNTHE fulfilled this passion – and today, Naja is the sole owner and Creative Director of MUNTHE.MUNTHE caters to women who are confident in their own style and have become a favorite for plenty of women all over the world.

The truth is that women have never been treated equally in the art world, and today they remain dramatically underrepresented and undervalued in museums, galleries, and auction houses. 51 per cent of all visual artists today are women. But according to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, 78 per cent of the galleries represent more men than women.

At MUNTHE, we find it interesting - and important - to help put focus on female narratives in the Art-scene. Both to highlight some of all these talented women, but also to draw attention to the gender imbalance that unfortunately still exists in this industry. Each Monday we therefore bring an interview with a female artist.

Every year, in relation to The International Women’s Day, MUNTHE design a t-shirt in support of the Danish Women’s Society. The shirt is in 100% organic cotton, designed with an oversize fit and has a beautiful print, both on the front and the back. The t-shirt costs DKK 499, whereof DKK 150 goes to The Danish Women’s Society.The Danish Women’s Society is an NGO, whose aim is to secure that gender equality is constantly on the politically agenda – and works across partisan views and considerations

Diversity is central to our way of doing business. Diversity in skills, age, gender, and culture background is a corporate advantage and an asset in all levels of the MUNTHE organization. These different types of diversity are enhanced through our recruitments. At MUNTHE, we strive to have women represented on all levels. In the middle of 2022, our employees-group consisted of 90% women.

We believe that beauty should be a source of confidence and not anxiety. MUNTHE want to inspire women to look like the best version and MUNTHE believes that the clothes are for nearly everyone Therefore we feature women of different ages, sizes and ethnicities in our campaigns and in our fashion shows.

Every year MUNTHE go wholeheartedly into helping girls who for some reason are either placed in foster care, in an institution or at a place of residence. In connection with their confirmation, they receive a gift card worth DKK 900 to one of MUNTHE's stores. The distribution will take place through the Danish non-profit aid organization The Child Welfare Day (Børnehjælpsdagen), which is working as a business fund. The Child Welfare Day purpose is to strengthen the personal and social competencies of placed children and vulnerable young people in Denmark. The aim is to make our young people more resilient and give them a better chance at mastering their own lives.

Many placed young people come from families where it can be financially difficult to keep up with the parties and the ‘gift rain’ that confirmands from more traditional families experience. Confirmation clothes, the party, expenses for “Blue Monday” are all something that runs up the bill - and can be incredibly difficult to live up to if you do not have the resources.

When you buy styles from MUNTHE MORE RESPONSIBLE, you contribute to a more responsible fashion industry. Our styles are made from min. 50% recycled or certified low impact materials that have a better and gentler environmental footprint.

Our Code of Conduct describes and sets out the ethical principles of the business carried out and conducted with MUNTHE. Our Code of Conduct is made to make sure that there are clear processes in place with our suppliers for preventing and addressing adverse impacts on human and labour rights, the environment, including climate, anti-corruption, and animal welfare.

We use this Code of Conduct to support us in selecting and retaining business partners who share our commitment to responsible and sustainable production as defined by internationally agreed conventions, standards, and guidelines. All our suppliers and their subcontractors must sign and comply with this and a copy must be translated into the national language by the supplier and read aloud for the workers and placed so that they can easily access it.

Percentage breakdown on MUNTHE supplier factories of 2022, by country:

We want to make sure that all our clothes find a home and we try to sell as much as possible through our stores and sellers. We make every effort to minimize waste from start to finish – and we only produce by orders. If there are remaining items, they end up in our MUNTHE MARKET’’s or are donated to charity. They are never thrown away!

MUNTHE always build our collections with styles that you could wear all year round – season after season. Clothes, that can be used now and used secondhand down the road. If there are remaining styles, we sell it in MUNTHE MARKET.

At MUNTHE MARKET you will therefore find nearly fresh styles alongside older styles, shop the previous collections at reduced prices - and save up to 60%.

One of the core values for MUNTHE is to make high quality, long-lasting and more sustainable styles is designed based on those principles.The Simple Studio-collection is a selection of indispensable and sustainable items. A collection of essentials, closet fail-safes, key styles which create the ultimate capsule wardrobe. We brought this idea to life by blurring the lines between everyday-workwear and styles, you’ll wear on repeat for years to come.

Besides supporting RED CROSS yearly with financial contributions, MUNTHE also donates any un-sold clothes to RED CROSS. This initiative balances well between being socially responsible and sustainable because firstly, it ensures clothes for people in need globally, typically migrating victims of war or climate changes that have been forced to leave their homes. Secondly by donating our clothes directly to end-users, we minimize the risk of it being exported as a part of the textile waste industry to some of the African countries where a big part of the clothes is ending up on huge dump sites, being burnt on open fires, left by riverbeds or washed out in the sea, with serious consequences for the local people and global environment. 

Invest in well-made styles in good-quality fabrics. Our styles are timeless and made in lasting materials, making them a safe investment for years, and a long-term solution for your wardrobe.

Wear your clothes more than once, repair the holes and imperfections if needed, and wear with care.

You can find the wash instructions specified in the care labels inside each style. Follow the instructions accordingly in order to keep your clothes in good shape.

Try to wash at low temperature if you use machine or wash by hand for delicate fabrics. By washing the correct way, you can prolong the life of your MUNTHE.

Even with slimline hangers, wool and cotton will stretch when hung, so it’s always best to fold your sweaters and jerseys to keep their shape. Hanging a wet wool sweater to dry not only invariably leads to the garment stretching in length but can cause distortions to appear in the form of humps on the shoulders of the garment. Always flat dry wool sweaters or other knitwear if possible.

Wool, Alpaca wool and silk is a self-cleaning fibre. The wind and sun can provide you with freshly air-dried clothes. This solution can help you to become more aware of how badly you need to wash your clothes and find various solutions instead. Most of the time, this will be enough for your styles.

Our care service prolongs the life of your MUNTHE styles and help to reduce waste. If you have any questions, please contact us at shop@munthe.com

We use as little packaging materials as possible, and ALL our packaging is made from materials that can be recycled. In our MUNTHE stores we only use paper bags or reusable cotton tote bags. We care about the environment, and we think our customers do too.

We only use FSC-certified produced boxes and recycled paper bags. FSC is a global not-for-profit organization that sets the standards for what is a responsibly managed forest, both environmentally and socially. When timber leaves an FSC-certified forest they ensure companies along the supply chain meet our best practice standards also. So that when a product bears the FSC logo, you can be sure it’s been made from responsible sources. Even our hangtags are made from recycled FSC certified paper, recycled plastic and polyester.Our clear plastic packing bags are manufactured from recycled material that can be recycled again and help protect our products whilst having a lower environmental impact. Both the waste and the use of raw materials can be reduced – and it’s also cutting greenhouse gas emissions and helps to promote the fully recyclable economy philosophy. As a receiver of MUNTHE clothes you can help by sorting the packaging correctly when discarding them.

When we are organizing a photoshoot or hosting a fashion show, we only bring reused props and revamp the ones we already have – by repainting them.We only eat, drink and serve organic food and drinks. No plastic bottles. No printed invites. Only goodie-bags with environmentally purposes.

We have developed a Code of Conduct rooted in the UN Sustainable Development Goals to ensure a baseline for the ethical and environmental aspects of our collaborations. We believe that this is a strong tool to implement and so we use the Code of Conduct to monitor ourselves and our supplier’s actions and progressions towards a more sustainable future in the fashion industry.

We visit our Tier 1 suppliers min. twice a year to develop new collections, collaborate on new sustainable initiatives and to follow up on our mutual goals. As a supplement to our own visits, we have independent inspectors making unannounced visits with our suppliers to make sure that they are complying with our Code of Conduct.

We would like to have as transparent a production as possible and therefore, we are in the process of mapping our Tier 2 and Tier 3 suppliers. However, this is not an easy task and it shows even us with all clarity the complexity of the textile production business. By breaking the different suppliers down, it becomes possible to measure impact and monitor processes which again helps to decide what elements of our production we need to simplify to become to create an even better and more sustainable version of the MUNTHE brand.

At MUNTHE, we are very much aware that choosing suppliers is a way to leverage power and a way to promote our ethical values on how to treat people and planet and so, it requires a delicate balance. While it might be the overall case that European suppliers are generally more progressive and compliant with ensuring decent work environments and environmentally sustainable production, the opposite might not always be the case. We are fortunate to have a yearlong relationship and collaboration with several of our Asian suppliers that have proven to have values and ideas very similar to ours, and so we feel that by owning up to these collaborations by pushing for a better future, we can make a positive difference in the local communities and create a ripple-effect that benefits many of the women and their working conditions.However, the pandemic made us aware that we are vulnerable with geographical distant suppliers and so we are on a journey to convert to European suppliers in the cases where we have a newer and less deep collaboration with our current suppliers.

Our employees and our suppliers are undoubtedly our strongest asset when it comes to achieving our ambitious sustainability goals. Therefore, we dedicate time and resources to educating both on our initiatives and the philosophy, purpose and promise that lies behind. We believe that what it will cost us to set an ambitious and committed direction now, we will get back manyfold in the talented and ambitious people that we will be able to attract to help us moving forward on our conscious journey. 

We work with all our suppliers to sustainably source the best materials for every MUNTHE style in terms of aesthetic, long life, comfort and performance.

View our Preferred Materials List to explore and learn more about the materials we love, and why we have chosen them.

Preferred Materials List

The main challenge in the fashion industry is the huge number of resources that is being used several times a year when a new collection is launched. It is not only the production of actual material but also the water and chemicals that are being used in the production of new fabrics.

To help reducing this, we can choose to work with materials that by nature have a lower environmental impact such as hemp or organic cotton and as the technology increasingly enables us to have more and more recycled material this too is an effectful way of lowering the footprint of a style.

At MUNTHE, we have the goal that 50% of every collection measured across styles consist of either low-impact materials or recycled materials. To guide us, we have identified a list of good materials and certifications.

We aim to manage distribution of deliveries to customers in the most environmental efficient way. This means that we strive to have full loads of trains and ships as well as look into geographical delivery to create the most effective routes. We primarily use transport services from logistics and transportation suppliers who actively work with their CSR activities and environmental impact.

We constantly strive to optimize the transportation efficiency of our products with the aim to decrease the CO2 emissions.

We work to reduce carbon emissions consolidating the transport of our goods and selecting less carbon emissions by consolidating the transport of our goods and selecting less carbon intense modes of transport. Therefore, we have substituted 65% of our transport from aircraft – to rail and sea, which will help preserve the environment throughout the world.

Our goal is to run a business that is sustainable in the long term. To do this, we need to embrace a holistic view of MUNTE and the ecosystem that we sit within. Consequently, we continuously monitor our resource consumption and instruct new employees in environmentally conscious behavior, such as sorting waste and considering the use of paper. All light at our office has been changed to LED, which contribute to approximately 50-75% reduction in energy compared to conventional light. In our kitchen, which is painted with organic paint, we do not only focus on green and healthy food, but we also focus on the environmental mark. Therefore, around 99% of the food our staff and guests consume, as well as all cleaning products etc. are organic.

• Annual donations since 2002
• THINK (a recycling Fashion Show) 2012
• CLUB 10 Ambassador since 2015
• Donation Ukraine 2022

Sale of Naja Munthes private wardrobe – every year – in support of Christmas help for vulnerable children.

Supporting individual children with monthly donations.“Because I am a Girl” – jacket made in collaboration with ELLE back in 2013 for the benefit of empowering young Indian seamstresses to become self-sufficient and become an integral part of their work organization – with health insurance, health checks, pensions, scholarships etc.

Monthly donations since 1989.

T-shirt sold in support of and in connection with the International Women’s Day every year.