The topic of sustainability has become very popular in recent years. Despite the obvious effect of unsustainable fast fashion brands on the environment, people are also concerned about the human rights violations that happen in these factories. So now that the public has become more aware of the problems through documentaries like True Cost and River Blue, the problems with the fast fashion brands are now becoming more public. Throughout the last two or three years, a lot of sustainable fashion brands have gained popularity, offering their clients not only good quality clothes from ethical sources but also a much more transparent look into the production process starting from the factories and their workers, to the materials they use for goods. The industry will probably grow even bigger in the following years, considering that more and more new sustainable brands keep popping up almost every month.
We have recently witnessed a resurgence of male fashion, with people finally questioning why men’s fashion has to be so boring, an article by the Guardian talked about how men are taught to dress in dull fashion, and nowadays men are investing in their style. Fashion, in general, is one of the most widespread topics that has affected almost all realms of life. Everyone in some way engages with fashion and it is becoming more and more mainstream to consider fashion and its impact on our daily lives. There is hardly an industry left where fashion isn’t prevalent: you’ve got blackjack games available at many operators that are specifically targeted towards fashion, we have movies made about the fashion industry and everywhere we see the ads for stylish stores. So Fashion whether we want to admit or not has a huge impact on our everyday lives.
When we think about sustainable brands in the context of today’s worldwide discussion on climate change it seems more than appropriate that these brands are just gaining attention. It’s about time the customers started to ask questions about where their clothes actually come from
The fashion brand that has taken over the fashion world as well as Instagram, is Reformation. The brand has registered its very own material that is sustainable-Tencel. The owner of the brand is Yael Aflalo. She has the first attempts at forming a clothing brand in 1999. She was quickly discouraged after she learned about fashion’s negative environmental impacts one of them being just how chemically charged the process of creating said clothes are. She abandoned the project in hopes of creating a brand that wouldn’t be so wasteful.
She succeeded in 2009 when Aflalo started Reformation, which has since built an impressive following not only because of its remarkable selection of clothing but because of its green footprint. All of the reformation’s clothes are made from sustainable materials, whether that be carefully selected fabric, repurposed vintage or produced deadstock. Alfaro manages her whole business within LA so it’s quick efficient and sustainable.
Next on our list is Everlane. An American sustainable brand that focuses on the timeless pieces, clothing shoes and bags alike and offers full transparency of their product making process. It is unique because of its transparent pricing policy. If you visit Everlane’s website you will see that they give you a starting price point, but then you can chose to pay extra to sustain their green production process. Everlane has headquarters in San Francisco, California, plus offices in New york. It was founded almost 10 years ago by Michael Preysman and Jesse Farmer as an online menswear retailer. By 2015 the company receiver $1.1 million in seed funding. The company started a referral invite list that gained 60,000 subscribers in 5 days, even though the company only had 1500 t-shirts in stock at that time. Now Everlane uses its platform to educate its customers and inform them of its supply chain, factories, and the price breakdown of each product. The company has now vowed that it will stop using virgin plastic by 2021. In 2018 Everlane started a new campaign called ReNew where they create outwear crafted from the materials that were created out of 3 million recycled plastic bottles.
And the last brand we’re going to discuss is Veja. Veja was founded in 2003 by Sebastien Kopp and Francois- Ghislain Morillion. The founder met with organic cotton farmers in North Brazil and wild rubber tappers in the Amazon to establish the production chain behind Veja. In 2006 Veja started using is vegetable tanned leather to produce it’s now world-famous sneakers. The Veja trainers are made of organic cotton, wild rubber, and vegetable-tanned leather and recycled plastic bottles. Veja has established itself as one of the few sustainable sneaker productions. The company started in Paris, France and has offices in London U.K as well
