The Mum Who Discovered Her Kids Were Wearing Plastic Every Day - And Built The Brand To Change It

Four years ago, in her garden on a hot summer's afternoon, Jennifer Donnelly watched her two children running around in their sportswear and asked a question that would change everything.

"I just remember the heat, and the clothes sticking to their skin, and thinking ‘what's actually in the clothes they're wearing every day?’"

The answer horrified her.

Jen, a mother of two who had spent twenty years carefully choosing raw milk, organic food, filtered water and natural skincare for her family, had never thought to apply that same scrutiny to her children's clothes. So she started researching. And what she discovered would become the foundation of a brand.

"Polyester is plastic. Nylon is plastic. Polyamide is plastic. They're all made from petrochemicals," Jen says, explaining that is what many children are wearing for much of the day.

For Jen, it was a turning point. She and her husband Ben had worked in the environmental sector for over two decades and knew greenwashing when they saw it. Once they understood that synthetic fabrics shed microplastics with every wash and every wear, these same particles that researchers have now detected in human blood, lungs, brain tissue and placentas, there was no going back.

So Jen went looking for the alternative.

There wasn't one.

"Up until your child is around four years old, you can find the most beautiful organic baby grows, organic sheets, gentle natural fabrics," she says. "After age four, it all disappears. What's left is overwhelmingly synthetic. And the few natural options were either beige and boring or covered in characters, which my two are far too cool for."

That gap became the brief. Jen set out to build a natural-material activewear brand for active children. No polyester. No nylon. No microplastics. No compromises.

It took three years.

"Suppliers would send us samples and tell us everything was natural. Then we'd pick the cuffs apart and find synthetic elastane, or the stitching would be nylon, and they'd shrug and say that's what everybody uses and reel off the names of huge global brands they manufactured for. We just kept saying no. We knew what we knew, and we couldn't unknow it."

A major step forward came when Jen and her team developed three proprietary fabrics: Plantech™, MeshFlex™ and EarthKnit™, engineered to deliver the breathability, stretch and durability active children need, with an emphasis on minimizing or avoiding synthetic fibres.

The dyes mattered too. Jen recalls countless evenings pulling off her children's socks or a new tracksuit and finding the dye smudged across their legs and feet. "We now know those dyes are often made with PFAS, forever chemicals and that they sit against the skin, which is the largest organ in the body. It all made sense in hindsight."

Today, Svante (svantestudio.com) is led by one of its signature pieces, the Girls Plantech™ 2 Piece Sports Set, a leggings-and-sports crop top combination designed for active girls who want to move freely without their parents worrying about what's pressed against their skin all day long.

But the brand is about more than the clothes. Svante has launched RE:Svante, a UK take-back scheme that accepts any branded children's sportswear, gives the parent a Svante credit to spend in store, and donates the returned clothing to charity.

"We didn't set out to start a brand," Jen says. "We set out to find clothes for our children. When they didn't exist, we created them. And every parent who buys from us is doing the same thing we did, refusing to accept that performance, comfort and our children's health have to be a trade-off."

For mothers everywhere who have already started reading the labels on food, skincare and bedding, Svante is now asking the question many of us haven't thought to ask:

What's actually in the clothes children are wearing?

Discover Svante at svantestudio.com.

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