She spent 2 years finding the perfect fabric. Now she wants you to wear it forever

The Park’s Sarah Bonello is using obsessive material sourcing and timeless design to change the way women think about their wardrobe.

The most sustainable piece of clothing you own probably has nothing to do with recycled polyester or organic cotton. It’s the little black dress you’ve worn on repeat for 15 years and the pair of ripped Levi’s 501s you can’t imagine ever throwing away.

The harder question—the one the fashion industry has never quite figured out—is how to design something like that on purpose. How do you make a garment someone loves now and will continue to wear for years? This is something Sarah Bonello thinks about constantly as she designs for her new label, The Park.

After decades in fashion PR, where she developed a finely tuned sense of what the market was missing, Bonello believed there was room for a line of basics—T-shirts, simple dresses, pedal pushers—that make it easy to get dressed in the morning. She came to the conclusion that the garments we love are the ones that fit beautifully, thanks to the drape and feel of the fabric. “It was interesting to see the pieces I’ve had for 20 years that I never want to get rid of,” she says. “They’re evergreen pieces that make you feel beautiful.”

Bonello set out to reverse engineer some of her favorite garments, creating a collection she believes will make women look and feel good at any age and size; 18 months ago, she launched The Park with a tightly edited collection of T-shirts, trousers, and dresses.

The bet paid off faster than she expected: Retailers like Moda Operandi and Net-a-Porter started selling out of her pieces regularly, and Nordstrom has just picked up the brand. Now she’s expanding the line, making her best-selling silhouettes in new materials—velvet, a gossamer sheer—while keeping the edit deliberately tight.

The Park tries to be sustainable from the ground up. Each piece is made using fabrics with a small environmental footprint, like fibers sourced from responsibly managed forests and nylon made from fashion waste. But Bonello doesn’t believe most consumers buy clothes because of their environmental credentials. What she believes—and what she’s building her entire business around—is that she can nudge customers toward more sustainable behaviors simply by making pieces they want to wear on repeat.

The Anti-Trend Collection

To make clothes that fit beautifully and will last for years of repeated wear, Bonello knew she needed exceptional fabrics. She scoured the market for high-quality materials from leading mills.

Meet Kyoto: the typeface that bleeds (on purpose)

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