Green ICE

A story that started in 1954 The Belgian family business was founded in 1954 by André Cleyman. The company, based in Sint-Niklaas, started with a small but high-quality and innovative range of knitwear, all manufactured locally by knitwear makers from Sint-Niklaas. An official brand name soon followed, to set the company apart from its competitors. Inspired by its innovative character and the quality of the goods it delivered, the name Tricot Novi was born.

Green ICE today By the early 2000s the company had outgrown its own name. We produced a full womenswear collection, and Tricot Novi no longer covered it, so the brand was renamed Green ICE. Two generations later the family is still at the helm, and the work still happens in Sint-Niklaas. Every new season starts at our styling department. We look at the up-and-coming trends and translate it into something our customer actually wants to wear. From there, the real work begins. We need to translate an idea and a vision into a wearable piece of Green ICE clothing, and that means getting every detail right: which fabric, knitted or woven, which type of knit, plain or printed, and if printed, in which style. A very large part of those prints is drawn in-house, in Sint-Niklaas, which is why they are made to work with the colors of the collection rather than against them. Fit is where we are most particular. We work out our size charts size by size, so that a garment falls the way it should in a 34 and in a 50. Not just the same pattern scaled up. It is slower and it costs more, but it is the difference between offering a size and actually fitting it. It is also why our customer tends to come back: once she knows how a Green ICE garment sits on her, she knows what to expect. And then there is how it all fits together. Each collection is built around three or four themes, but we design them to work across those themes as well. A blouse from one, a trouser from another, real mix-and-match capabilities. That is a deliberate restriction we put on ourselves, and it is what turns one collection into many different outfits, from casual to dressed up. Today Green ICE is sold in more than 120 points of sale. And although a lot has changed since 1954, the way we work has not. We have stayed a family business, with no layers between us and the people who sell and wear our clothes. Everything is still decided in Sint-Niklaas, around the same table. Photo credit: Green ICE