The Call to Action 

For over two years, TŪNIQ has been working to build an ethical clothing manufacturing cooperative that relies on indigenous crafts and production techniques to bypass the violence of the fashion industry. Now, we need your help to finally launch and make the project financially sustainable, support more artisans, and preserve these traditional crafts by scaling production and offering an ethical alternative that intervenes at every stage of the supply chain, from sheep to shop.

We are modeling a new way to produce beautiful clothing and textiles without:

1. The environmental devastation wrought by the textile industry which is polluting our waterways with laundering chemicals and dyes, over-farming water and natural resources, and producing 50 billion garments worth of textile waste every year.

2. The low wages and harsh working conditions rampant in the textile industry in which 1 out of every 25 people on earth are employed, many of whom are Muslim women, including forced labor of Uighur Muslims on cotton farms in China.

Your support will help us finally bring our alternative model to a large audience, overcome our production bottleneck, and truly offer an alternative to fast fashion to a much wider range of people. Over the next few months, your funds will go towards repairing old looms and tools (~$5,000), hiring and training new artisans (~$12,500), and building up a modest stock of our most popular items (~$7,500). 

We've proven the model, now its time to really launch! Your donations now will ensure the longterm sustainability of our efforts to support artisans, as many of these are one time costs that will generate sustainable income for the co-op. They will also go towards continuing to produce our videos & articles interviewing artisans and educating our community about how clothing is made and the harms of the modern industry.

Our Story

We, Iman, Leila, & Mariem, started TŪNIQ in late 2018 with a small amount of grant funding and a commitment to supporting talented women artisans so they could continue to own their means of production and work from their homes on their own schedules. In meeting artisans from all along the clothing production process, we learned about the beauty and complexity of textile making, as well as the ways in which it has been distorted by modern exploitative methods. 

Between the abhorrence of profit-seeking on one hand and the violence and extraction of modern capitalism on the other, the Islamic ethic of trade affirms that commerce can be a force for building community relationships, distributing needs and benefits widely, and generating joy and fulfillment. God says in the Qur’an, “Oh you who have believed, do not consume one another's wealth unjustly but only [in lawful] business by mutual consent” (4:29). To see an interview with one of our artisans in which he explains the personal and political benefits of hand work, watch here!

We believe "Islamic" clothing & textiles have to be about more than just physical covering; they have to model our wholistic values including respecting the sanctity of human dignity, labor, & God's earth, not recreate the harmful impacts of the wider fashion industry. You can read more about our radical ethics and policies here, but below are some highlights:

We have spent a long time refining and improving this incredibly complex process (taking on the whole fashion supply chain is essentially like wading into 10 different industries! e.g. farming and animal care, fabric treatment,  spinning, dyeing, weaving, pattern making, & cut & sew). We spent months finding creative solutions to cut plastic completely out of our packaging, negotiating new policies with our shipping companies to prevent the use of plastic lamination on customs forms and traveling far and wide to create our new 100% recycled kraft bags that are held together with potato starch glue (compostable in your backyard!) and are protective up to 60 kg! For months, we've refined our plant-dye process, losing hundreds of meters of fabric in the process. We've had to redo the sewing for entire collections because of one defect, launder a whole shipment of rugs because of bad weather, and wait over half a year without income because of outdated bureaucracy and policies. We've worked our way up to meetings with Ministers and Parliamentarians, to offer recommendations for e-commerce solutions to benefit all, not just solve our own problems. We've done it all with a smile, because we knew what we were working towards. Through it all, our community has been so supportive, and we're so grateful to you all!

Our new women's workwear collection offers a range of minimalist, classic blazers, coats, and pencil skirts which are modest and follow our custom sizing for wider hips and thicker thighs. Additionally, our new range of organic, plant-dyed prayer rugs are very popular, and we are so proud to offer them as an alternative to mass-produced polyester rugs made in exploitation and with over-stimulating designs.

We have now reached a stage where we are immensely proud of the quality and beauty of our collections, alhamdulillah. We've shown that truly ethical clothing that brings blessings and benefits rather than harm is possible! Now its time to move past this prototyping stage and make our solution widely available to artisanal workers and supporters!

We face multiple challenges that your support can help us overcome. Young people don't find artisanal work attractive, because it hasn't provided stable work for a long time. We plan to guarantee their income for an entire year if they follow our training model and ethical standards. We've already brought on a few artisans with this model, but are facing a capital chokehold. Second, our supply chain is incredibly complex, being able to buy larger volumes of wool, herbs, tools, etc. at once can help us to standardize dye colors, weave styles, etc. so that our products have more mild internal variance. Third, we just generally need to up production but our profit margin is so slim that we are not growing financially as fast as our customer base is growing! We need to increase production so that we can stop being sold out of everything, and to do that, we have to repair old looms, bringing centuries-old weaving, spinning, dyeing, and sewing tools back to life! Finally, our office in Tunis is struggling to keep up with orders and burdensome bureaucratic requirements for every shipment. We need to move into a larger space and bring on more team members! Every donation or share will help us towards our goals!

Our Record

22 Artisans, majority women, supported in our cooperative

2 original collections & a line of minimalist prayer rugs

KIND WORDS

"Firstly, I want to say to the team that this is an amazing shop and intention, and the whole aesthetic is absolutely beautiful. May Allah reward you and increase and facilitate ease with the whole operation of tuniq and its ventures."

-Muhammad A.

"The folks over at TŪNIQ are the only ones doing it right, not just a 'muslim clothing line' but educating everyone on how/what we "consume"

-Khalil

"But I think TŪNIQ is the most important thing we need in the modern world right now. It shows us that people don't have to wake up at 5:30 am and arrive at a factory to produce valuable and beautiful goods. But to think that we as humans, creatures of our Lord, on this beautiful earth, having to subscribe to time-schedules made up by other people... at least let them own their work! not all of human potential reduced to those who are already powerful in this world."

-Kamran J.

"This is why businesses built on a truly ethical model like TŪNIQ are so important! Makes me so hopeful to see something so radical in its approach, only way we're going to be able to resolve such a pressing issue"

-Fatima S.

"TŪNIQ does wonders according to a return to the traditional process that range from the maintenance of the sheep herd to the realization of clothes that combine tradition and modernity, comfort and elegance. A concept with beautiful singularity."

-Dounia D.

"By Allah’s Grace, you are fostering and nurturing the importance of empowering our artisans, helping them achieve financial security along with dignity; introducing some beauty into the world that’s been inundated with fast fashion that’s  hurting our planet and the health of those who inhabit it and, in many ways, you’re bringing back the Sunnah of our Prophet, may Allah’s peace and blessings be upon him and his family... through encouraging intention (produce clothing that brings benefit rather than harm - for Allah’s Pleasure) , patience (each piece made by hand takes time and we must wait :), and re-defining beauty (For Allah is Beautiful and He loves Beauty)."

-Farah A. (Chicago)

& so much more! Thank you all so much for the support!

How you can help

Donate any amount to our campaign! Most importantly, share with your networks online and in person! We need you. 

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