About US
Acting together
MELA is derived from the Sanskrit word Mela (मेला) and means "gathering," "meeting," or "fair"—a place where people come together.
For us, MELA stands for collective action.
And that is exactly what we have remained to this day: not a company that sells fashion, but a meeting point for people who believe that you can make a difference with clothing.
How it all began
2014, Lüneburg. Henning founded MELA with a question that wouldn't leave him alone: Why should a T-shirt harm the people who sew it and the soil on which its cotton grows?
His goal back then: "We want to show that it is possible to provide truly fair and sustainable products for the fashion market." A standard we continue to measure ourselves by today – and one you can see for yourself in the next section.
It began with a single product: a basic T-shirt made from fairly produced organic cotton.
WHAT HOLDS US TOGETHER
We could say we are sustainable. We prefer to show what that means for us in concrete terms: Every MELA garment has been triple-certified since day one – by Fairtrade Cotton, GOTS, and the state-run Green Button textile label. A combination you won't find anywhere else in this form.
We maintain a personal, friendly relationship with all our partner companies. Not because it sounds good, but because it is the only way to achieve real, shared change in the textile industry.
Wir haben Ihre Kleidung hergestellt
Our cotton comes from Indian Fairtrade cooperatives, and it is processed in Fairtrade-certified facilities in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu – depending on whether it is being made into a t-shirt, backpack, sock, towel, or bed linen.
Because cultivation and processing take place in the same regions, we have short transport routes and can produce under conditions that we can truly trace. The people who sew your clothes are not just a number in a supply chain to us – that is why many of them hold up "I made your clothes" signs in our photos.
You can hear more about this in our podcast: Episode #4 – Supply Chain · Episode #5 – GOTS · Episode #6 – Fairtrade Cotton
Our Community
A gathering thrives on the people who come together – not those who just watch. For us, that means our colleagues in Kassel, the people in the cooperatives and sewing workshops in India – and you, whenever you wear a MELA garment.
We don’t want to be a niche product for a select few; we want to make fair, certified fashion accessible to as many people as possible. The larger our gathering grows, the more we can achieve together.