Soft, stylish, and sustainable on the Surf Coast

Torquay has a new local for all your soft, stylish, and sustainable needs.

At Looop, Surf Coast residents Fiona McPherson and Sue Ingpen have combined to sell their ethical and sustainable hand-made clothing and yarn labels: Ochre Yarn, Okki and OkkiD, each label represented by an “O” in “Looop”.

“It’s all thoughtfully made with the planet in mind, and we just didn’t want to do the mass scale,” McPherson said.

“It’s only open three days a week, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, because I make everything locally in my little studio, so it’s all made by us and Sue hand dyes everything and then gets it all fair trade knitted.”

McPherson’s women’s clothing brand Okki and children’s clothing brand OkkiD are hand-made in her Jan Juc studio, using sustainable materials.

Ingpen’s new label Ochre Yarn includes hand-dyed yarn created from a unique blend of merino, silk, and yak down, which has the same soft micron as cashmere, with knits ethically hand-made in Nepal.

“We just didn’t want to do the mass scale, it’s very easy to send styles off to China and get them made in bulk and then do a lot of wholesale, but this is a different ball game, it’s more creative, and its special pieces so people don’t look the same walking down the street,” McPherson said.

The shop is filled wall to wall with yarn and sustainably made garments.

Being hand-dyed, Ochre Yarn products are everything from bright colours to neutral colours; all with natural, soft tones that seem to reflect their natural source.

“Our core values are basically just looking after the planet and doing things differently.”

In keeping with this, Okki and OkkiD clothes are all made in limited stock, and McPherson said they are always looking for new ways to keep the planet in mind.

“I only make a limited run of apparel,” McPherson said.

“I also make stuff out of old recycled denim. I get old jeans from the op shop or Customers drop off their 100 per cent cotton jeans to the shop as well as buttons and things like that, and I make bucket hats and purses and things like that.”

“Then I remake garments, so, if I find dead stock I embellish it with embroideries or different colour fabrics and do different things to the garments to turn them into new garments, and then I’ve also got second hand Japanese garments in the store as the recycle side of the business.”

McPherson has also begun collaborating with local artists, using designs, photographs and patterns from like-minded Surf Coast creatives.

McPherson and Ingpen met more than two decades ago, quickly bonding over their mutual love of quality yarns and fabrics.

Before opening Looop, McPherson previously owned local clothing brand Oishi-M, and Sue Ingpen was the owner of Pear Tree Products, later called Echidna Handmade Knits.

“I’d moved down from Melbourne 22 years ago, and I loved her shop I just got talking to her,” McPherson said.

“I used to do all the fabric sourcing for RipCurl back in the day and I got talking to Sue about colours and fabrics and textures and all that sort of stuff and then when I had my first baby… Sue said ‘Right you now have to stock my shop’.”

“Then she got me into my first trade fair and really nurtured my business into what it became really, without Sue there wouldn’t be a business, she was my mentor in that area.”

McPherson said Ingpen created the yarn blend, hand-dying everything locally.

“She’s created this yarn, it’s a merino silk and yak blend which is the same micron as cashmere, so it’s super soft and lovely.”

“She hand dyes all the yarn and then sends it over to Nepal to get it fair trade knitted by Nepalese over there, that’s Sue’s story.”

“We really want to make sure that with our creativity we’re not devastating the earth.”

Looop is located at the McCartney Real Estate Arcade Shop 5/7 Gilbert Street Torquay, and is open Thursday to Saturday each week.

To keep up with the Looop journey, follow @okkicollective and @ochre_yarn on Instagram.