Call to Action Clothing to Launch After Delaying to Support Front Line Workers During Pandemic

Hingham, Mass. - Call to Action Clothing (C2A™), a woman-owned responsible swimwear company, is set to launch on May 21, 2022, in Nantucket, after the pandemic delayed their launch by over two years.  

Dedicated to the slow fashion movement, C2A features incredible fabrics in multi-use pieces that allow you to move beautifully and seamlessly from the beach to the court to the club. The brand is also disrupting women’s swimwear with its patent-pending technology, the Bits Blocker™ which eliminates polyurethane foam cups in swimsuits. This innovation helps both women and the environment by keeping foam pads out of landfills while also providing modesty without the inconvenience of pads that twist or fall out. Now you can dive in without worrying about popping out. C2A also created the Boomerang Band®, which is a design that supports pregnant women’s stomachs and stretches to fit their growing bellies.

Jill Palese, the designer of C2A, planned to launch the company in March 2020. True to their ethos, Palese and co-founder Dan Rakauskas chose to stop producing swimwear and start making medical gowns to help frontline workers. They used their factory and fabric resources to create 8,500 medical isolation gowns. A graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, Jill drew on a lifetime of experience designing swim and activewear lines for Jones New York, Lands’ End, Gottex, LL Bean, Delta Burke, and New Balance.

The first hurdle was finding enough medical-grade fabric when the supply chain was not in place to satisfy the sudden demand. Jill leveraged her industry connections to find a distributor in NYC and purchased 17,760 yards of material - enough to fill an entire shipping container.  Jill remotely trained the factory workers to execute the pattern and manufacture the medical gowns. Part of the inspiration for the project was to keep furloughed factory workers employed. C2A provided $250,000 worth of medical gowns to hospitals in the Greater Boston Area.

"We were uniquely able to help,” said Palese. “Making the choice to pause and pivot took about five minutes because it meant that we could use all of our resources, experience, our factory, and the talented team of technicians to support local hospitals.  I would make exactly the same choice again and again".

C2A will kick off its long-awaited launch campaign with an invitation-only event at the Club Car at the Nantucket Wine Festival on Saturday, May 21, from 1 to 3 PM. The brand has many other exciting activities planned for summer, including several pop-ups around Cape Cod and the islands, a partnership with influencer Tara West, and an appearance at Miami Swim Week.

Call to Action (C2A) is a sustainable swimwear startup headquartered in Hingham, Massachusetts, that focuses on producing long-lasting women’s swimsuits. True to their mission, Jill and Dan put their launch aside to produce and donate 8,500 reusable medical gowns during the pandemic. Now slated to launch in May 2022, C2A combines fashion and engineering to create one-of-a-kind swimsuits. The brand has six sustainability certifications for its manufacturing processes and a patent-pending technology called the Bits Blocker™.
For more information, visit https://c2aclothing.com/ or visit their Instagram @c2aclothing.

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