About Friendsday

Friendsday is a small slow-fashion business located in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina. Our passion is to make colorful, comfortable and fun clothing, and promote the joy of making and moving.

We define "slow fashion" as using earth friendly materials, making products in small batches to avoid any overproduction, making everything in a respectful and humane way, and keeping waste in minimum. We make pants out of second-hand t-shirts (the world is full of them), shirts and eye pillows out of organic cotton, organic silk and organic everything (to support the organic farmers), and meditation pillows out of second-hand blue jeans - and those valuable scrap pieces left over from cutting patterns for clothing. 

Aino Riiho is the owner, designer and seamstress of the company. She started the company because she wanted to use her time on this planet, and the skills that she's learned, into something that will clearly have a positive effect on the world around. Her mission is to manufacture beautiful and comfortable clothing in ways that support social and ecological sustainability, always striving towards a world that’s less destructive and more helpful and friendly.

Aino says: "I have an educator’s heart, worker’s hands, and a mind of a designer, and I really appreciate different manual skills and doing-it-yourself mentality. Repetition and making things in volume come naturally for me and combining different skill sets and experiences really help me in being able to see the big picture. I was born in Finland and traveling back there every summer really inspires me in the design work - seeing the difference in how people are, and dress themselves, is so interesting! I’m also a little dinner-party addict, a wanna-be dancer and a great appreciator of friendships, even if it means video-chats across the globe at weird hours!"