How Atelier Tulpe is Redefining Ethical Fashion in Vancouver

It’s not often that you hear of a Vancouver-born fashion brand that’s actually making their clothes in Vancouver. Sure, we’re all acquainted with lululemon — which has worldwide reach — and Aritzia, which continues to expand rapidly in Canada and the US. Or perhaps you’ve heard of Oak + Fort, which has over 30 locations across North America. But none of these Canadian fashion brands produce their clothes in Vancouver — or even in the country.

For Mackenzie Cameron, founder and designer of Vancouver-based fashion brand Atelier Tulpe, the most crucial aspect of her label is that it is made locally in Vancouver. She founded the brand in 2021 during COVID-19, the downtime allowing her to pursue garment construction. As her orders began to grow, she knew she wanted to find a manufacturer close to home.

Two years ago, Cameron found the women-owned and operated pattern and sample studio, Fashion Studio No.5 after a quick Google search, and decided to partner with them. “While producing locally is more expensive, it comes with valuable benefits like better communication, hands-on involvement and greater transparency,” says Rodika Goreea, founder of Fashion Studio No.5. For Cameron, “it’s more of an ethics thing. The people working there are running their own business, they’re making a living wage, they’re making a salary, and it’s right around the corner, so I know exactly what their studio looks like and the conditions they’re working in.”

Cameron’s office and showroom are located in Gastown, and Gorrea’s manufacturing facility is only a three-minute walk away. In between the two is a fabric store where Cameron often sources her materials. She is particularly conscious of using natural fibers and will only opt for synthetic fibers if they are deadstock. But that’s not the only thing that’s top of mind in the earlier stages of production; minimizing waste is equally as important.

Each of Cameron’s designs are either made-to-order or produced in small batches. While the industry standard for small batch production typically ranges from 30 to 500 garments, Atelier Tulpe operates on a much smaller scale. For the garments she’s been selling the longest, she’ll order around 30 to 70 pieces, while new styles — which go through two to three sample iterations — will consist of 20 to 30 pieces across all colours and styles. “When I’m doing something new, I want to dip my toes in the water and see how pieces sell. I don’t think there’s a point in making a bunch of something people aren’t going to want,” she comments.

From there, the completed items will travel the (very short) distance to her office, where Cameron will pack and ship them to customers. It’s important to note that the items are never transported in plastic — not even from the manufacturer — and are delivered in recyclable mailers. But “it’s hard to balance a customer’s expectation of receiving a package,” she states, stressing her opposition to unnecessary excess. “In a perfect world, I wouldn’t use a postcard, I wouldn’t use a hang tag, I wouldn’t wrap it in tissue.”

Before reaching out to her manufacturer, Cameron made all of her garments herself. When she finally made the leap into working with them, she began with the Bowtie Vest, which she not only knew was a mainstay of her brand, but had made so many times that she already had a strong idea of how it looked, felt and was constructed. Beginning this journey into a slightly larger-scale production has also benefited her personally, with her sharing, “Since I started working with them — because they have far more experience in garment construction than I do — there is less imposter syndrome with the garments because I know that they are being made by people who have been doing this for 20 plus years.”

Arguably, one of the most difficult parts of running a business in the way Cameron does is knowing that there will be certain restrictions you have to work around, whether that be how much money you make, how many styles of garments you can sell, or how much you can produce.

In fact, she’s almost apprehensive about selling too much. In March of 2024, her bestselling Bowtie Vest went “a little bit viral,” and she had an influx of orders; her manufacturer produced 500 of the garment over eight weeks. “When I had that push of orders, I was like, ‘Am I okay with this? Is this too much? Is this excessive?’, in terms of producing so much, because to me, 500 to 600 pieces is a lot,” she shares.

Cameron is all too aware of overconsumption in the fashion industry in Canada and quickly sets herself apart from that. When speaking to a friend of a friend, she recognized that the desire for mass production — and consumption — seems to be widely accepted. “No matter how much I was trying to emphasize that my principles are more important than being a billion dollar company, he just couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that I didn’t want to scale endlessly and indefinitely,” she details, adding, “An important part of running a business is sticking to your ethos and not doing all sorts of mental cartwheels to deceive yourself into thinking you still have the same values you did when you started.”

Cameron is incredibly honest about her low profit margin. Upon starting Atelier Tulpe, her overhead costs were minimal because she initially paid herself whatever she could. “When I started getting more orders, that’s when I could afford a smaller profit margin because there’s just more pieces being sold, period,” she tells me. On the other hand, she knew she couldn’t change her prices from $150 to $500 overnight — it wasn’t fair to her clientele and didn’t reflect the type of business she wanted to run.

“I remember when I first went to [Goreea], she was like, ‘You need to be charging more, your pieces are made in Canada.’ That was a bit of a wake-up call,” she reflects, “But, I don’t want my pieces to be so inaccessible.” Even at their current price point — with the bestselling Bowtie Vest sitting at $209 and the rest of her designs ranging from $90 to $289 — what she’s charging is comparable to Aritzia, which made around 2.33 billion Canadian dollars in 2024 by mass-producing overseas. With an Atelier Tulpe piece, though, “You’re supporting a small business, you’re supporting my small business, you’re supporting a small manufacturer, and you’re shopping intentionally.”

With the constant threat of tariffs on American goods, it’s more important than ever for Canadians to shop locally — especially when it comes to fashion. Canadians are urged to look a little closer to home, which, in turn, benefits small brands like Atelier Tulpe. “I did notice a teeny, tiny bit of upturn in Canadian orders,” she mentions, adding that there has also been a rise in media awareness.

“There’s so much innovation in the fashion landscape in Canada that goes unnoticed. If you ask someone from New York, LA, or London, I don’t think Vancouver would be at the top of their list for a fashion brand,” she says. “It’s nice to show off what we have and take up a little bit of space.”