Most performance fabrics start with synthetics and chemical finishes. STEWARDS, an entirely new Los Angeles-based sportswear label, starts with recycled cotton and aloe vera. Two years of development and a proprietary fabric technology later, the brand is making a serious case that performance and circularity don’t have to pull in opposite directions.
It began with a shared frustration by founders David Allyn and Brandi Andres. “David couldn’t find sportswear that performed the way he needed and still looked like something he’d want to wear outside of the gym,” Brandi explains. “I was running a boutique where I sourced products that were good for people and good for the planet, and I could find that in almost every category except sportswear. Activewear especially just wasn’t there.”
The question they kept returning to was a simple one: “Why is nobody doing this?”
Courtesy of STEWARDS
It turned out the answer was friction. The conventional industry logic had quietly settled on an assumption that circularity, performance, and considered design could not coexist in a single garment. David and Brandi disagreed. “We didn’t want to accept that,” she says. “The whole premise of STEWARDS is that your clothes should perform for you and for the planet, and we don’t think you should have to choose. We just decided to go build it.” Building it took over two years.
The center of the debut collection is AV Max™, a proprietary fabric developed through a process that embeds aloe vera directly into recycled cotton fibers via microencapsulation. In practice, this means microscopic aloe capsules are bonded into the fabric itself, releasing against the skin through the natural friction of movement. “Most performance fabrics rely on synthetics and chemical finishes to manage moisture, odor, and durability. We took a completely different approach,” Brandi explains. The result is natural odor resistance, a cooling effect, and what they describe as a silk-like hand-feel that caught even them off guard during early testing.
The proof came on an unseasonably warm January day in Los Angeles. David went out for a two-hour walk and run in one of the brand’s black tees, in 85 degree heat. “When he came back, his face and arms and neck were flushed from the heat, but everywhere the shirt covered was noticeably cooler, and visibly not flushed.” They hung the shirt up afterward with no fan and no airflow. “About twenty minutes later we could hardly see the strip of sweat and there was no scent left.” Brandi adds, “That was when we stopped imagining what AV Max™ could do and fully experienced it.”
Beyond performance, the fabric has a quieter sustainability benefit. Because it naturally manages odor, it needs to be washed less often than conventional sportswear, which over time means less water consumption and less wear on the garment itself. “It’s a self-reinforcing system,” Brandi notes.
That systems thinking extends to every detail of how the product is made. From the thread, to the hangtags, labels and NATULON® zippers, every component is recycled. “If someone picks up a piece of STEWARDS, we want every part of it to reflect the same intention. Not just the fabric you can see and feel, but everything you can’t.” The brand also uses water-based dyes throughout, a choice that doesn’t appear on any label but sidesteps the toxic runoff associated with conventional synthetic dye processes, which account for over 90% of textile dyes on the market.
Courtesy of STEWARDS
The decision to work exclusively with natural and recycled materials was also, for the founders, a personal one. “We think a lot about what it means to put something against our skin every day. Our skin is our largest organ, and most activewear on the market is asking us to press synthetic fabric against it for hours at a time without really questioning what that means.” Brandi traces her awareness to years of navigating skin sensitivity, which led her into clean beauty and wellness, and later into the clean air industry, where she began thinking seriously about what the body absorbs without question. David’s focus was on the material’s cost to the planet before it ever reaches anyone’s skin. Organic cotton was considered early on, but recycled cotton made more sense as it bypasses the agricultural stage entirely, requiring no new land use or water draw, and remains biodegradable at the end of its life. The first season is made entirely from post-consumer recycled cotton, material that already existed and would otherwise have ended up in a landfill.
The brand’s name carries the same weight of intention. Originally conceived as Stewards of the Earth, it was eventually reduced to a single word. “STEWARDS on its own already carries everything we wanted to say,” says Brandi. “A steward is someone who takes responsibility for something beyond themselves because they believe in what the future should look like.”
Aesthetically, the brand draws from the ease of early 2000s Los Angeles, not the excess of that era, but the particular kind of effortless confidence that the city has always worn well. “LA isn’t just a brand story for us, it’s part of our deeper stories,” notes Brandi. “One thing LA does really well is refuse to separate movement from identity. That tension between high standards and total authenticity is what we try to carry into everything we make.” For Brandi and David, the city is less a backdrop than a reference point, a place that understands how clothing functions as both protection and expression.
The collections reflect that. Pieces are designed to move across contexts without announcing themselves, built to last in the way that well-considered things tend to last.
What STEWARDS is ultimately after is something the industry has long treated as aspirational language: genuine circularity. “We’re aiming for circularity, not circle talk,” the founders say. “Why work with new, virgin fabrics and materials when all of the components already exist in the world?” New recycled fabrics are already in development for upcoming seasons. The first collection, by their own account, is a beginning. “What’s coming next is the reason we built this brand.”
Follow along and stay updated with STEWARDS on Instagram @stewards.la.
Courtesy of STEWARDS
Presented by APG
