How it’s made

Grown in Texas, knit in North Carolina, sewn and dyed in California.

A hand-drawn map of the United States with arrows tracing Pansy’s route: from Texas to North Carolina, then to the Bay Area with elastic from Rhode Island, and on to you.

Pansy production From farm to form

  1. Texas Organic cotton fields

    Our cotton grows free from conventional chemicals, pesticides and fertilizers. Sometimes you may find a little bit of the plant still in the fabric. We like to think of it as a souvenir from the farm.

    Once it’s picked, it’s ginned, packed into bales and certified organic by the Texas Department of Agriculture, to the same USDA organic standards that all organic food grown in the US must meet.

    Open cotton bolls on dry stalks in a cotton field.

  2. North Carolina Cotton mills

    The bales are trucked to North Carolina, where the cotton is cleaned, spun and knit into our beautiful organic cotton fabrics.

  3. San Leandro Sewing factory

    The fabric is rolled up and shipped to a small, family-operated factory in San Leandro, and we carry it off the truck ourselves. The cutter rolls it out in stacks of around 50 layers and hand-draws a marker from the pattern pieces so no fabric is wasted. Extra fabric from pants and robes becomes scrunchies, and we take even the tiniest remnants home to stuff furniture.

    Every piece is sewn with organic cotton thread and natural cotton and rubber elastic from Rhode Island. The factory is licensed with the California Department of Industrial Relations and follows all of California’s labor and safety standards. Everyone there is paid at least California’s minimum wage, currently $16.90 an hour, plus any overtime.

    Stacks of freshly sewn, undyed underwear and bras on a cutting mat, beside a couple of tangerines.

  4. Novato Dye house

    We garment-dye every piece after it’s sewn, so we can keep undyed stock at our studio and dye only the exact amount we need. No excess, no unwanted pieces.

    We sort the pieces into reusable dye bags at our studio and drop them off at the dye house in Novato, where they’re dyed in small batches with non-toxic, fiber-reactive dyes in the whole Pansy rainbow. That’s why shades can vary slightly. The dye house follows all of California’s strict environmental, labor and safety regulations.

    A wall speckled with dye above the dye house’s sinks, with bags of garments waiting in front.

  5. Oakland Pansy studio

    We drive everything back to our studio for quality control, then sort it into bins, ready to ship.

    Laura Schoorl, in a mustard turtleneck dress, sits on a green stool in the studio, holding up an undyed sports bra.

  6. You! Wherever you are

    Your order goes out in a recycled paper envelope, with no plastic.

    Caring for your Pansy
    Three people laugh together under a clear blue sky: one in a rust bra and underwear, arms raised, one in a cream bra and one in a yellow T-shirt.

One thing that isn’t on the map
(...yet)

We sew with organic cotton thread made in India because we haven’t been able to source organic cotton thread made in the US. We chose imported organic thread over domestic conventional thread, and we’d love to make organic cotton thread that’s grown and spun in the US someday.

More about our materials

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