Our Philosophy

JustZen started out in the mid-2000s. It is a combination of a textile/surface designer and a computer geek (who already lived on the internet and ran several websites). Add to this combination the fact that total strangers stopped them in the street and complemented them about the tie-dye they were wearing privately - and it was more or less unavoidable for a website to be born to bring tie-dye 2.0 - as we sometimes call our mudmee tie-dye - to a wider audience.

Gigi, the designer, knew about the traditional mudmee tie dye that was native to her home country and had studied these traditional techniques to tie and dye clothing items from one of the very few masters still practicing this form of art.

When Gigi started to design her unique line of clothing she named it "JustZen" because that's what it was - - - the peaceful feeling of Just Zen and so our website became JustZen.com.

Much work has been spent to develope and create this line of clothing - JustZen - that combined the traditional mudmee tie dye with the western style of clothing, like henley shirts, hooded jackets and polo shirts - but we also sometimes offers more traditional items like harem or fisherman pants - just with a bit of western touch.

The protagonists of JustZen have been on the spiritual path for many years and it was clear that they wanted to give back at least as much as they received.

One of the first thing being done was adopting children from around the world that needed a jumpstart. ChildReach - later PlanUSA - offered the opportunity to become foster parents to children in all parts of the world where sponsorship was needed. At least 10% of the profits of JustZen goes to support these foster children.

The first few children were from Gigi's home country with the simple consideration that there would be a much bigger chance to actually visit them and meet them in person.

And Gigi did - she flew up to the village where we had three foster children and visited them...

one of the forster children with her mother and Gigi

another forster child with his mother and Gigi

School in the village of the foster children

In the meantime these children have graduated from the program and new children from around the world took their place. Children in Malawi and Mali (Africa), Bangladesh, El Salvador and Cambodia where adopted through the support from JustZen.com.

Maimouna Doumbia from Mali is 10 years old and came into the JustZen family just recently.

Another thought we at JustZen had regarding 'giving back' was that the best giving back is not to take in the fist place, and where that applied most is mother earth.

So we started to research what we could do to produce our product more in harmony with mother nature. At the conclusion of our research into availability of material and legal requirements we decided that the best way to go was using all natural fibers for our clothes but without attempting to fulfill the legal requirement in the US to call our products 'certified organic.'

The costs of becoming 'certified' was prohibitive without any advantage to the cause. Spending thousands of dollars only to get official certification did not seem too much in harmony with mother nature. So, we get the best natural fibers we can find and just call it all natural instead of certified organic.

To conclude this little trip into our world, we believe it goes without saying that we can, in good conscience, say that we created a sweatshop free environement (even though we sometimes sweat when we work hard). We know that, if the people working with and for us are happy, this will reflect in the products we can offer to our customers.

Peace Up!
Gigi and Merlin