about RAORI

RAORI is a Slow Fashion clothing brand founded in 2009 in Brussels by Hanna Westergren: Fashion Designer, Textile Teacher, Pattern Technician and Industrial Seamstress.

Slow fashion is the opposite of the hectic pace of the fashion world: we only produce a new collection every two years and make most of it to order in sustainably produced fabrics or unique One of a Kind garments, made from recycled materials.

We create warm minimalism for women in the form of comfortable and practical zero waste clothing, where each garment is made one at a time, locally and according to your personal measurements.
Get to know our designer, Hanna Westergren Gendebien

It started in Tokyo

After a few years as a fashion designer in the Stockholm and London fashion world, I decided to resign to move to Japan. I didn't like how the fashion industry mass-produced garments at breakneck speed, just so that companies in the western world could make as much money as possible at the expense of the climate and the terrible conditions of the workers in the poorer producing countries. I was ready to give up fashion seriously, but Japanese kimonos and the Japanese pattern construction with a focus on zero waste luckily made me change my mind...

The journey continued to Brussels

In connection with the birth of my first daughter, I took the opportunity to design clothes in a way that I considered to be more sustainable, with as little waste material as possible. I sewed together my new ideas from fabrics I had at home for myself and my daughter. I was a new mother in Brussels and had plenty of time to play, explore and test my new ideas.

That same year, Etsy in the US started to take off and I felt it was a perfect place for me. I sold on Etsy for 12 years until Etsy dropped the craft requirement and it was fine to start selling items that someone else made. I could no longer compete with cheap goods and instead started my own platform in Sweden.

The Photo Shoots
One of the best parts of running a fashion brand is the photo-shoots! This is where I can present the feeling around the clothes and see the design sketch come to life...

RAORI officially started when my friend, the photographer Eva Verschuere, wanted to do a photo shoot in an abandoned amusement park and needed my clothes on a model. Another friend Kira De Smedt posed as a model and we broke into the overgrown amusement park and shot my first collection in 2009. After that we continued as a team for several years. RAORI really took off thanks to good friends and family. It is impossible to do everything yourself.

Living handmade

With the house full of children, the decision was made to stop buying mass-produced products altogether! We were so tired of constant new trends, poorly made high street clothes and plastic toys that quickly break without the possibility of repairing them, terrible working conditions in poor countries, with an increasingly worse climate as a result. We no longer wanted to be part of this squirrel wheel, so we turned off the TV with a constant stream of advertising, got out into nature, learned to bake and cook from scratch and how to make toys and everyday things from materials we had at hand.

Naturhus in Sweden

We left Belgium in 2016 for my native country of Sweden. The dream of building a log house with a self-sufficient garden became a reality. These years have been the most important in our lives: we have learned to care for and repair our possessions instead of buying new ones. We have not only learned a lot of new knowledge and skills, but also found a strong connection to nature and the people around us. This lifestyle saves us a huge amount of money and therefore has given us more time to spend doing what we love and be more with our children. If we really need to buy something these days, we almost only buy second hand or support local artisans, farmers and shops.

 

 

proud member

Since 2024, we have been involved and contributing to the work for a circular Uppsala, RAORI Slow Fashion, sustainable fashion in Uppsala.