About Us

Bio

Nat and Helen's was founded by Mandi Altepeter. Mandi started caring about the environment at a young age. In the eighth grade, she read about the toll that cattle farming takes on the environment and instantly stopped eating red meat. A couple of years later she became a total vegetarian. She has always believed that a single person can make a difference.

After graduating with a degree in women's studies and philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Mandi decided to pursue something more creative and enlisted in the Fashion Institute of Technology's accelerated one year program for fashion design. While in school, she interned for Lucy Barnes and Jones of New York. Once she finished school, she started as an assistant designer for Lauren by Ralph Lauren. After five years of being in the fashion industry, Mandi decided to leave NYC and follow her dreams and open her own boutique. Nat & Helens combines Mandi's sense of fashion and style with her beliefs that we have the power to create a better world.

Nat & Helens is named after her maternal great-grandma and paternal grandma. Both of these amazing women helped to make her the woman that she is today. Her great-grandma, Natalie, who grew up during the depression and worked as a farmer's wife, taught her to not be wasteful and that things made with love are the best. While she would never have called herself an environmentalist, she was the most resourceful, commited recycle-er Mandi has ever known. Everything in her home got a second life as something else.

Helen, Mandi's grandma, was a mother to eight children and grandma to many more. She always put her children first and she taught Mandi about unconditional love. She also taught her that although life isn't always easy, everything's better with a sense of humor.

Both of these women lived their lives simply and left a small footprint on the earth but a huge one in a lot of people's hearts.

Our Philosophy

At Nat & Helens, it's important to us to offer high quality, high style goods that we can all feel good about. We believe that, as consumers, we have the power to vote with our dollars; to spend our money supporting companies who we believe in and who believe in us. To that end, Nat & Helens only buys organic or sustainable products made in the United States or in fair trade factories around the world. A lot of the companies that we support also support non-profit charities through donations of their profits. To give back to our community, a portion of Nat & Helens' yearly profits go to charities supporting children and the environment.