Amour Vert to open location in Montgomery Village in Santa Rosa

The newest retail addition to the Montgomery Village shopping center in Santa Rosa will be focused on sustainability in the fashion industry.

Amour Vert, a San Francisco-based woman’s fashion brand, will open its fifth location — the first in Sonoma County — this summer.

The brand, founded by Linda Balti and Christoph Frehsee in San Francisco in 2010, focuses on eco-friendly fashion.

CEO Dominique Mikolajczak said there wasn’t a sustainable fashion company around at the time.

Amour Vert, meaning “Green Love” in French, was established to create durable, ethically made and sustainable fashion, avoiding the wastefulness of disposable fashion trends, according to its founders.

A total of 14.5 million tons of textiles — clothing being the main source — went into U.S. landfills and were incinerated in 2018, according to the most recent data available form the Environmental Protection Agency.

“We believe in durability and because our products are not cheap, (customers) need to get something that is well made and will therefore last a couple of years,” Mikolajczak said Thursday.

Eric Lichtmess, head of marketing for Amour Vert, said the company also wants to be conscious of not “green washing” — the deceptive practice of falsely claiming a company, practice or item is environmentally conscious.

Amour Vert launched a resale program in 2021 to demonstrate the company’s stance against “green washing” and to cut down on waste. Through the program, called ReAmour, customers can resell their Amour Vert pieces or purchase other past-season items.

“We’re offering this as another solution to be sustainable and make it as easy as possible for people to pass clothing on in a highly responsible way,” he said.

The brand’s clothing focuses on classic pieces — the staples of any closet, from twill pants and knit dresses to linen blouses and wool cardigans.

“The product you see from our collection is never in the avant-garde of fashion, and it’s never meant to be exactly on trend at that exact moment,” Mikolajczak said.

Amour Vert’s clothing “perfectly matches the North Bay lifestyle,” said Brittany Mundarain, general manager of Montgomery Village.

“We are thrilled to welcome Amour Vert to our community,” she said in a statement. “And we can’t wait for their local fans and soon-to-be fans to have an option for beautiful, sustainable fashion close to home.”

The Santa Rosa shop will be the brand’s fifth, with two others planned to open in Sausalito and Chicago. There are currently stores in San Francisco, San Jose, Berkeley and Palo Alto.

“We’ve already had a very loyal and enthusiastic customer base in Sonoma County, so now they’ll have a physical location they can go to shop,” Lichtmess said.

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