Style has never been this eco-friendly

Don’t walk, ride! This is the motto of Eliška and Dagmar Mertová, the two Czeck sisters who, after studying abroad, decided to move back to Prague to start their own eco-friendly fashion design business: Segrasegra. They created an innovative line of clothes using unusual recycled materials and the bicycle tire inner tubes have become their trademark.

Their aim is to make cycling clothing fashionable and versatile, so that their wearers can go straight to the office or out with the friends without having to change. Style has never been this eco-friendly, as a matter of fact getting rid of the multicolored sportswear and substituting it with comfortable and stylish biking clothes is likely to encourage people to ride their bikes more often.

Fashion and biking have been central to the Mertovà sisters’ life since they were little, when their mother sewed their clothes and taught them that fashion was a bit like an adventure and their father took them for bike rides. However they took inspiration for their business from other countries.  After studying at Prague’s Vàclav Hollar Art College, they both spent a period abroad. While Eliska studied in Berlin, where she was influenced by the city’s street fashion, Dagmar  got similar inspiration in Finland.

They decided to move back to Prague in 2006 where they put to use the experience they’d gained abroad. After starting out by producing t-shirts, which soon became popular among their friends, they began to regularly supply small original clothing stores. Their business is still small, they only have two sewing machines and make a few dozen items per month but it’s promising. Some of their creations have been shown as part of Prague’s Designblok exhibition and their work is becoming so popular that they’re planning to enlarge the business and to hire more seamstresses. Thanks to these two young women the streets of Prague will be a bit more fashionable and fashion will be more bikers-friendly.