“T
he idea to start Greeningline was about going toxic free from the fabrics to the colour,” explains Celia Ingesson about the fashion brand she officially launched in 2020. After a successful career as a textile expert, designer and fashion executive – which required endless travel, sacrifice and shocking realities into the textile industry, particularly around labour practices and chemical dyes, “it all became too much,” she states.
Ingesson started her career with H&M in her early 20s, where she designed the brand’s famous ‘golden label’ in the late 1990s and its Grunge collection, helping to launch them into the US market. “There was a fun side and a dark side,” she says, about the experience. Going to the mills in Italy or being in India with textile makers and seeing her designs and ideas come to life was a thrill, but the harsh realities, from male-dominated meeting rooms to the fabric samples soaked in gas because it quickly fixed the colour and print, became toxic physically and emotionally. “I literally saw towns [in India] changed due to the chemicals. I inhaled it and it was on my skin. I thought, how can I keep doing this?”
As a young girl growing up in Sweden, Ingesson suffered from skin problems due to synthetic fabrics as well as certain foods. With her mom, she began making natural dyes, using food scraps, tea and plants from their garden and then played around with making her own clothes using vintage fabrics and natural dyes. She knew the connection between fabrics and health personally and she often wore her own clothes because of her ongoing skin issues. “I felt like I owed it to myself and other people to try and do this,” she says about Greeningline.
