RAORI is a slow fashion brand founded in Brussels in 2009 by Hanna Westergren Gendebien: fashion designer, textile teacher, pattern maker and industrial seamstress.

Slow fashion is the antithesis of the fashion world’s frenetic pace: we create poetic minimalism for women – comfortable and practical garments, made locally and to your personal measurements.

Textile waste is a massive problem for the fashion industry – every second, a truckload of textiles is dumped onto our planet or burnt. We use this material as a circular resource instead of buying new items, thereby creating ‘new’ unique garments of fantastic quality.

It started in Tokyo. After a few years in the Swedish and British fashion industry, Hanna decided to quit her job as a Fashion Designer to move to Japan. The change came after seeing the result of a linear fashion industry: overproduction with mass-produced garments churned out at breakneck speed, fashion companies making profits at the expense of the climate and the appalling working conditions of workers in poorer manufacturing countries.

Instead of giving up fashion for good, she returned to her knowledge in traditional Textile Crafts and was inspired by the zero-waste construction of Japanese kimonos and the art of Kintsugi (mending porcelain with gold). Perhaps it was possible to make fashion in a different way?

In 2008, Hanna moved to Brussels on maternity leave and had plenty of time to design and test these new fashion ideas.

The need to design and make clothes in a sustainable way, without creating waste, based on customer measurements and minimise returns became the goal. One day, after rescuing a large amount of fabric from ending up in the landfill, the first Slow Fashion collection from recycled materials, was born.

Slow Fashion Community. RAORI really took off thanks to dedicated people in the Slow Fashion community: Inside an overgrown amusement park in Belgium, photographer Eva Verschuere, model Kira de Smedt and RAORI shot the first RAORI collection- The Dadi Collection 2009.

The actors on the Slow Fashion scene often comes together for both photoshoots and fashion shows where jewellery designers meet bag designers and clothing designers. There is magic in making the design process come to life together in a wonderful community.

Slow Living. With a Belgian home filled with children, the decision to stop buying mass-produced goods altogether was made. Hanna was fed up with constantly changing trends, poorly made high-street clothes and plastic toys that break easily with no chance of repair, appalling working conditions in poor countries, and the resulting deterioration of the climate.

Hanna started looking into circular economy and switched off the commercials to get out into nature, learnt to bake, grow food, sew clothes and cook from scratch. The skills to care and look after belongings, repair broken items rather than buying new ones, became a slow lifestyle.

Log home in Sweden. Leaving Belgium in 2016 to return to Sweden, the dream of building a log home with a self-sufficient garden became reality.

Learning a wealth of circular knowledge and skills over the years, a strong connection to nature and the local community, made living a "slow" lifestyle possible with more time available for creativity and family.

In 2023, RAORI launched the first Swedish collection, Wild Things; in 2024, and was nominated for Sweden’s Re-designer award and is now an integral part of the Swedish Slow Fashion movement.

Hanna is a circular fashion activist and inspire others by organising circular fashion shows and remake workshops, as well as giving talks on The dark side of the Fashion Industry and what we can do ourselves to ensure a circular future for fashion worldwide.

RAORI COLLECTION

RAORI COLLECTION