Several fashion brands have been built on frilly, country and resorty house dresses, Hill House Home, Doen and Natalie Martin amongst them. But Melissa Magsaysay and Andrea Racey wanted something different, crisp but comfortable house dresses that made them feel put together, and is also talking points concerning the must value domestic labor.

Enter Duster, the duo’s latest brand of contemporary house dresses with a mission to support the reason behind women’s economic empowerment.

For every dress sold (prices are $215 to $240), 2 percent, or roughly $5, will go to Mothers First, a nonprofit fighting for reasonably priced child care, paid leave and equal pay for mothers.

“Even pre-pandemic I’ve at all times had swirling in my head these house dresses called dusters — that’s what we call them within the Philippines — that my mother, grandmother, all the ladies in my life throughout childhood would wear at home,” said Los Angeles-based fashion journalist and brand consultant Magsaysay of her latest enterprise with Racey, the L.A.-based designer of silk wear brand Helena Quinn.

“I’ve spent years trying to search out something like this dress and it’s either too boho, or it doesn’t have enough structure to make me feel pulled together,” she said of looking for a method within the $250 range that would go from school drop-off to a Zoom meeting to lunch.

“Hybrid work is here to remain and we’ve more of those moments in our day now where you could possibly literally just fall on the bed together with your laptop and also you don’t need to be too precious about what you’re wearing, but you may must pop up again in quarter-hour to do something where you’re feeling you desire to look more presentable,” she said.

She approached Racey for assist in production and manufacturing, and the 2 began ruminating over the home dress as a logo of girls’s care work.

“These are dresses that reflect the work that ladies and caretakers try this doesn’t have a price tag,” Racey said. “That was highlighted throughout the pandemic whenever you saw women pulling out of the workforce at astronomical rates and the mental health toll.…There may be an enormous infrastructure issue that’s not being addressed because we’ve no approach to measure it economically. It’s not measured within the GDP. Statistically, if women had been paid for all of the domestic labor they’ve done within the last yr, they’d have made $217,000 and that’s the equivalent of $1.5 trillion that will be added to the U.S. economy. So bringing these two things together, we’ve this dress as a sartorial talking piece about unpaid domestic labor and caretaking.”

“We keep saying the look of labor has modified,” Magsaysay said. “Within the Philippines, you may buy [a duster] anywhere — from the corner market, for the equivalent of 5 U.S. dollars, to a complete floor of a department store in Manila dedicated to them. It’s that ubiquitous and democratic, because we’re all caregivers, we’re all on this boat together.”

Magsaysay was on the founding team of beauty brand Thirteen Lune, and Hollywood activist organization I Am a Voter, while Racey has been involved in a variety of charitable endeavors. “So having fashion but additionally the mission driven piece feels very authentic to every thing we’re each doing anyway,” Magsaysay said.

“These dresses are seeing you, valuing the work that you just do, and offering you something that is reassuring in your days but additionally continuing to give you the results you want whenever you take it off,” Racey said.

The duo approached Mothers First founder Reshma Saujani after attending to know her work constructing the nonprofit Girls Who Code and launching Mothers First.

“Whether it’s our workplaces or government, we’ve just never designed them for mothers,” Saujani said. “Even the workday is nine to 5 and faculty days are eight to a few. You’re immediately organising mothers who do two-thirds of the caregiving work in our country to fail. Everyone knows the facts that the U.S. is the one industrialized nation that doesn’t have paid leave, 90 percent of low-income mothers don’t have a single time off after they’ve a baby, and 40 percent of fogeys are actually in debt due to the fee of kid care. Mothers make 58 cents on every dollar made by fathers,” she said, explaining that Mothers First is engaging the private sector to see child care as a profit like family health care, and constructing a bipartisan community of mothers to fight for these policies.

“There’s a way for mothers that something has to alter. And I feel they feel like with Mothers First that finally any individual sees them. So we’re so honored to partner with Duster and the indisputable fact that Duster selected us, because lower than 2 percent of philanthropic funding goes to women and girls, which is why we’re still oppressed, and since it helps really move culture. I can’t wait to wear among the dresses on date night,” Saujani said.

“If you happen to have a look at the cultural images of moms, it’s like we’re not sexy. We’re not appealing, and there’s a direct correlation between that and never having paid leave and never having child care. You don’t value what you don’t admire, so there must be this movement of brands like Duster who’re seeing mothers as cool. In the identical way we modified culture with Girls Who Code and making coding cool, we’ve to make being a mom cool.”

Duster is launching with eight styles made in cotton with a little bit of stretch, in five colorways each, sizes XS to XL. Every part is manufactured in downtown L.A. by a female-owned and -run factory. Every Duster has pockets and is bra-friendly. The founders anticipate dropping two latest styles a month.

They’re selling direct-to-consumer at Shopduster.com, with the hope of bringing on a few strategic retail partners down the road.

For launch, they’ve a sturdy social media plan, with storytelling across the partnership with Mothers First on each Duster’s and the nonprofit’s social channels. “The way in which they roll out their marketing and storytelling through stats and data is a extremely effective way of putting this information on the market and really moving the needle to get this topic discussed more within the mainstream,” Magsaysay said.