Mexican rock band Maná is expanding its fight to save endangered sea turtles with a clothing line.
The band, known for its environmental activism, is stepping into the fashion industry with Ritos del Sol, a line of ecofriendly jeans and T-shirts for men and women.
A percentage of each sale will be donated to the group's Selva Negra Foundation, the nonprofit it created in 1995 to raise awareness and take real action to save endangered species and help underserved communities around the world. It offers four lines - Selva Negra, Cosmos, Laberinto de Concreto and Inframundo - with designs that go from abstract prints inspired in flora and fauna to skulls and a skeleton's ribs.
The musicians said the idea was presented to them a couple years ago by the designers at a Puebla, Mexico clothing factory owned by a cousin of vocalist Fher.
"The clothing that he makes uses 25 percent of the water that the factories normally use in Mexico," Fher said. "They are also good to their employees, it's fair trade, and they work in indigenous communities not only in Puebla but in Oaxaca."
Drummer Alex González said band members weren't initially convinced because "it's not that easy to launch a clothing line and we have seen other bands and other artists (doing it) and some of them have done well, other not so much.
"But more than a business for the band, we wanted for it to be a positive idea and proposal so that when people would buy the clothes they would know that they are doing something beneficial for the environment," he added. "So Fher came up with this idea of supporting the sea turtles that we have in Mexico."
All four band members were involved in the designs of the T-shirts.
"At the end of the day, it had to be clothing that we wanted to use, both on and offstage," González said.