Meet the Founders: Lynda’s Story

dea is founded on a backbone of strong women, passionate about natural health, comfort, style and the environment. Lynda Warren and Deanna were long term friends, bound together by shared values, before they founded dea. 

Lynda has always taken a practical, hands on approach to her nature loving environmentalism. She first experimented with permaculture while still a child, with her own plot on her parents lifestyle block. Her keen interest in science at Whangarei Girls’ High School, led her to pursue environmental studies at the University of South Carolina - Aiken, gaining a degree in Biology and Geology. 

Lynda returned to New Zealand and eventually ended up on a 15 acre property at Maraetotara, Hawkes Bay, where she gave birth to two beautiful girls. Lynda’s passion for ecological solutions, and willingness to put in the work to achieve them, extended to her parenting. Her girls were raised with cloth nappies, organic food and natural fibres close to their skin. 

Viewing An Inconvenient Truth, the 2006 documentary on climate change, brought home to Lynda just how pressing the environmental emergency was, and she set about a goal of self sustainability, jokingly calling herself a ‘prepper’. With a vast host of skills and a can-do attitude one can imagine Lynda would be in demand at the end of days.

Lynda works her 15 acres with respect and care for the land and all that grows on it, consciously composting and caring for her soil health first, and then her vegetables, fruit trees and animals. She’s raised cows, goats, sheep, pigs, chickens, ducks and bees. Her cupboards are filled with home made preserves, including at times, goats cheese and beef jerky from her own cows.

This focus on holistic health and mindful living drew her to Deanna’s vision for an ethical clothing range, not only stylish and comfortable but one that cared for the health of the wearer and the wellbeing of those who produced it.

Lynda takes an organisational and administrative role at dea, as well as rolling up her sleeves to hand dye the fabrics that made dea’s very first products.

She made the soy milk and soaked the fabric in her bathtub. She collected avocado pits, walnut husks and pomegranate peels, and painstakingly processed them at her kitchen stove, dyeing the fabric a beautiful range of colours. The scientist in her enjoyed experimentation, cutting her process back to the bare minimum in order to produce the finest quality product that would nourish skin and any waste could be fed back to her soil.

For Lynda, founding a conscious line of clothing is an extension of her lifelong quiet activism, a way to demonstrate an alternative to the easy but unsustainable way of living most of us take for granted. “Walking into big fashion retailers makes me ill,” she says, “the quantity, the waste, the ethics of production. I would like to change by example, to open people’s eyes and make a difference.”

We believe at dea every change starts with a small step. Maybe you don’t need to change your whole life, you could start by just changing your underwear ❤️