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What Makes a Fashion Brand "Sustainable?"

Sofia Greaves
3 min read

"Sustainable fashion" is a hot topic right now. The term is getting thrown around by bloggers, consumers, and fashion experts alike, but has it lost it's meaning?

I would argue that what's most important in the sustainability of a brand is how their products stand the test of time, how workers are treated, and most importantly how inclusive it is to the target audience. It doesn't matter if a brand does everything right environmentally if only 10% of the human population can afford and fit into the clothes. Since StyleVersive is fashion-focused, I am interested in finding out what it is that establishes a brand's products, apparel specifically, as ethically and sustainably made.


The first thing you need to know is that sustainability of an apparel product is primarily determined when taking a design from an idea to conception. Sustainable textiles need to be determined by their longevity, function, and how their finishing process can be accounted for during the product development stage of the product lifecycle. When determining fiber content, the most important info to me on a brand's "About" page are statements that do not have an ambiguous interpretation. Claims like BPA-free, Scientific Certification Systems (SCS) for recycled content claims, and the Oeko-Tex Standard 100 certification will always hold more value than a brand's "mission statement" or their purpose because it proves that they have taken active measures to make sure their products back up their mission. It is also important to find out what percentage of the garment you are looking at has been ethically produced. It could be as little as the tag, and as detail-oriented as the fabric finishing process. Bioengineered fabrics serve as substitutes for both expensive natural materials and replace blended material made of recycled plastic that is not biodegradable (Sherman). According to scientific American writer Erica Cirino. “algae-based fabric holds considerable promise as a marketable bioengineered clothing material because it is strong and flexible, two properties essential for mass-market apparel.”(Cirino, 2018).


When searching for sustainable clothes outside of the secondhand market, it's good to look at how trend-focused brands compare to Reformation and Everlane. Reformation is the leader for trend-focused sustainable fashion with a quick turnaround for new products, they hold the standard for the new and emerging eco-friendly brands in the mass market.


However, Everlane uses a strategy of breaking down the cost of making each garment by material, labor, and business markup:

We believe our customers have a right to know how much their clothes cost to make. We reveal the true costs behind all of our products—from materials to labor to transportation—then offer them to you, minus the traditional retail markup.

Another example, Proclaim, is for women of color who cannot find nude undergarments in their skin tone, aka they are filling a need, a gap in the apparel market. They have a level of transparency on their about page that lives up to a standard comparable to pioneer Stella McCartney's detailed approach to sustainable high fashion. They use Tencel and Repreve, which are produced from recycled plastic and wood pulp-turned-cellulose fibers, and they have made the process from production to packaging cleaner and put less responsibility on the consumer to waste out packaging, which is extremely important:

We believe details matter and that when it comes to packaging, less is more. Our poly 	mailers, wrappers and hang tags are all Made in USA out of 100% recycled materials and are 100% recyclable. The poly mailer is also designed to be reused with a dual adhesive strip for 		resealing.






Sustainability in fashion is not just about how environmentally friendly the products are, however it likewise includes taking extra measures in preventing unsafe working conditions. Companies with large profit margins can afford to compensate workers and vendors enough to where the people who make their clothes can afford to wear them. The more rewarded properly run factories are, the more common that business model will become. To put it bluntly: terrible pay and quick turnout will no longer be competitive. An example of an unfair labor practice is the act of paying fair hourly wages rather than per piece. It is a toxic work environment that neglects the needs of employees and what's worse is companies deflect responsibility on to the factor that employees them when they influence these practices by giving impossible deadlines and threatening to pay the factories less if these needs aren't met. The opposite of this practice is examined with independent designer Lirika Matoshi. The brand built its first factory in Kosovo from the ground up and is 100% run by women.

Essentially, the brands I mentioned, among many more out there, hold themselves to a standard that fulfills the consumers' needs before it does any capital gain. It has to fill a gap in the industry to really succeed, and then with that success comes responsibility.


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