ocean+main's Sustainable Story and Promise

Eco friendly caftans and tunics inspired by the ocean, made on main street. Ethically sourced and locally made in Los Angeles.

At ocean+main, we love the ocean.

We love being in it, around it, near it, but most importantly SAVING IT! Responsible water usage and water conservation is a pivotal part of what we do at ocean+main. We are proud that many of our styles require zero water in production, but to ensure quality, some of our fabrics need a rinse. When necessary, we only use recycled and reclaimed water in trace amounts. Oh, and we're obsessed with caftans.

We love all things natural.

Protecting the ocean and all things natural is our raison d'être. Each year the garment industry prints, dyes and treats millions of yards of fabric and what isn't used in production gets sold off. We love to find these beautiful fabrics and re-purpose them for you. Using up-cycled fabrics means we aren't further taxing Mother Earth's limited resources. When we work with a fabric mill or artisan, we ensure no fixatives (the really bad stuff) are used for the dyes and the water is 100% recycled.

We love main street.

All our garments are made in Los Angeles which means we are supporting local artisans and keeping production at home in the US of A. Made in the USA also means we aren't shipping garments over a continent and an ocean before they get to you.

We love up-cycling and re-cycling and hate plastic.

All ocean+main garments are shipped from our site in a re-usable cotton bag, perfect for using over and over again for travel, organizing, and storing. None of the items shipped from this site are in single-use plastic bags.

No single-use plastic is used in production.

We love limited edition:

We might make 5. We might make 50.

All ocean+main garments come with a numbered hang tag so you know exactly how many were produced and the provenance of the fabric.

Who we are:

Hi, I’m Mary.

Thanks for finding ocean+main.

As a self-confessed lover of caftans, travel and the ocean, I've had the desire to pull my passions together for years.

In my career as a designer and buyer for luxury brands I was doing work I enjoyed, but it was work that seemed to be taking me further away from my path. I found myself growing weary of the fashion system and my place in it.

Seeing the tremendous waste in the industry, like the copious amounts of water used to print, dye and treat fabric, and, watching perfectly good bolts of fabric be pitched in the bin for no good reason, I knew there had to be a better way. But, I wasn't exactly sure what a 'better way' looked like.

What I was certain about, however, was my love of caftans. As a child in Hawaii, I would watch my Mother and her friends float effortlessly across the lanai; exotic, free, and happy in their flowing caftans. As an adult, the caftan remained a perpetual source of inspiration and it has sent me to thrift stores and flea markets across the globe in search of the perfect caftan, kurta, kanga, dashiki, kimono, or tunic. Every culture, every climate, every gender and every period in history has had their version of this quintessential garment, each more inspirational than the next.

It was in Los Angeles that I found my tribe, other ocean lovers and caftan lovers who encouraged me to make my own. One caftan became two, then five, and after a trip to a warehouse filled with unused fabric, a path for 'better way' became more clear. ocean+main became a way to do things differently - a way to put people, planet and purpose first and a way to pay homage to the rich history of the caftan and be mindful of my two mothers; Mother Earth who sustains us everyday and the original inspiration for it all, my sweet Mom.

We hope our small changes help make a difference in our big world.

Thank you for joining us and I hope you find something to inspire!

Mary Price

Founder, Creative Director

Say hello.

mary@ocean-and-main.com

Hey I'm Nicci.

Coastal living is all I've ever known.

I was born in Cape Cod and have lived in Venice Beach for the last 10 years.

Originally I moved to LA with the dream of having a sustainable and conscious line of my own. I wanted to blend what I had learned about the world after studying and traveling in college, with ideas that had begun to emerge about a new way of living.

Shortly after moving to LA, and by total chance, I fell into a position at an art driven modeling agency that ended up being my whole life for nearly a decade. It was super fast faced / challenging, and I had many opportunities for creativity. It was there that I realized I'm more of an artist than a CEO.

These creative projects started to grab at something deep inside me, and I knew I had to get closer to my original intention of moving to the city.

That's when chance struck again and I met Mary while I was in the midst of changing the momentum of my life and career path.

As o+m has grown, I've discovered that it's second nature for me to help bring the story to life through our visuals and social media creative direction. I've spent my whole life close to the ocean. What I love about living at the beach in LA is that I have access to everything awesome about a city like: culture, art, food - but I can blend it with a coastal lifestyle too.

To me sustainability is the most crucial issue of our time, and it extends into every aspect of life no matter the industry. Innovation of long broken and unsustainable systems is a crucial reality, so I'm really proud to be a part of something trying to make a small difference in an ever growing world.

Nicci Arone

Creative Content Director

nicci@ocean-and-main.com

Our Story