sustainable fashion | how is the fashion industry becoming more sustainable?
what is sustainable fashion?
The Sustainable Fashion movement aims for sustainability in the fashion industry, strongly opposing Fast Fashion, a terrible business model that produces 10% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and 20% of global wastewaters, polluting our rivers and seas. This planet-killing business practice is also responsible for the buy-n-throw and excessive consumerism culture that pollutes our soil and waters with tons of textile waste, as 85% of all Fast Fashion garments are thrown each year.
Sustainable Fashion differs from Slow Fashion in the path it takes to achieve sustainability in the fashion industry, while Slow Fashion focuses more on clothes that are produced with slower manufacturing cycles, fair trade, and supporting smaller businesses, while also caring for the sustainability and quality of its garments, Sustainable Fashion puts a little more weight in the ecological impact of its clothes, using organic, recycled materials like organic ring-spun cotton and other environmentally-friendly biodegradable materials.
At the end of the day, all these anti-fast fashion movements want to achieve the same thing, they just differ in the path they take and on what they consider more important. For example, Ethical Fashion focuses more on the welfare of textile workers, who are exploited in the Fast Fashion industry with inhumane wages and terrible working conditions, many times reaching modern slavery.
how is the fashion industry becoming more sustainable?
In recent years, customers have been informing themselves about the repercussions of their fashion choices on our world and the terrible consequences of Fast Fashion on the environment and our society. This has led to an increase in sustainable garments, slow fashion brands, and more, which is great. Not only that, some big brands have even changed how they operate so they can become more environmentally friendly.
Many sustainable fashion brands have been born since then in order to fight Fast Fashion and offer a sustainable and ethical choice for customers. However, these brands are still small and do not have a lot of clients, because customers are not yet informed o the subject and do not turn to Sustainable Fashion because they don’t even know it exists and why it’s so important. Nevertheless, it’s a good start and in the future, the fashion industry is going to become much more sustainable than today, which is strictly necessary if we don’t want to destroy our world permanently.
Big brands, and even Fast Fashion brands, have been making a few changes in the way they operate so they can become more sustainable. However, these changes are usually not enough and in some cases, like Zara, it’s as if they aren’t doing anything, which is something we will going to talk about right now.
what is greenwashing?
This increased awareness in the customers that now seek cleaner, more eco-friendly, sustainable fashion options, is a great thing that is reforming the planet-killing fashion industry, but it has also come with some cons, one of them is Greenwashing, a shameless practice that we will explain in a second.
Greenwashing is a practice in which brands try to look environmentally friendly and sustainable without doing anything regarding the subject, using Sustainable Fashion to their advantage with malicious intent. This is obviously extremely immoral, and yet some brands are doing it without even trying to hide it.
Brands like Zara or even SHEIN, the creator of the ultra-fast fashion production model, are „trying” to greenwash their harmful activities by telling their customers they care about the environment or that they will take measures in the future without any evidence of them even trying to do so. Customers have to be conscious and use critical thinking in these situations and not any brand fool them in that way.
what are some of the best sustainable fashion brands?
However, even with these problems with the sustainable fashion movement like greenwashing, there are a lot of brands who are trying to make a difference by offering customers real options so they can change their fashion habits for the better. Having said this, here are the best Sustainable Fashion brands that you can buy online now:
Grammar NYC:
This beautiful store sells one of the best clothes out there, not only do they use the best quality materials, but they also make their designs with FASHION in mind. The only bad thing about this brand is its price, which is arguably very high, but at least the quality and sustainability match the price greatly. You can visit their store here.
Two Days Off:
This store uses locally produced, ecological clothes made with recycled materials. They use linen, cotton, wool, and hemp for their products. Like the last one, price is not their strength, but they do offer original and stylish clothing. You can visit their store here.
ABLE:
This Ethical Slow Fashion Brand has clothing and accessories made fairly by makers around the world. They are taking a big step in the way for transparency in the fashion industry by publishing their wages. Their clothes are more affordable than the other brands but still not as cheap as one would like to. You can visit their store here.
Valani:
This colorful Plant-based clothing brand creates mostly feminine clothing for a lighter living. Valani’s dreamy garments are made from low-impact fibers like hemp, Tencel, and banana viscose, a bit like Two Days Off. Additionally, the brand uses strategic cutting techniques and reuses fabric scraps to minimize waste. They have really colorful clothes that you should check out here.
PLEA:
This is our own brand! We too offer sustainable slow fashion clothing that you can buy. We mostly focus on t shirts, hoodies, and accessories, but they’re at an affordable price, and not only that, but we offer customizable clothes, That’s right! You can create a custom t shirt, hoodie, or accessories so we can then make them and sent them to you because we use a revolutionary method that does not involve creating tons of clothes before selling them, we just produce them on command! You can check out our shop here.
These are some of the best small brands, Sustainable Fashion brands that sell their items online. This goes to show that there are still some available options for customers to change their fashion habits for the better. Anyways, as we have said before, you don’t have to go all crazy with Sustainable Fashion, a small change today makes a big difference tomorrow, and the biggest change you have to make is deciding to inform yourself on the subject.
summary
We hope you have learned something today and that you put this information into good practice, as we just said, the biggest change you have made is deciding to become informed, which is the best step of them all, because only when consumers become aware of this fashion problem will they change their habits for the better ditching the planet-killing Fast Fashion.
We are thrilled to teach people all around the world 🙂 Also, did you really know what Fast Fashion really is and its terrible consequences for the environment, the planet, the workers, society, and the economy? Do you know exactly what the Slow Fashion or Sustainable Fashion movement is? You should really take a look at these articles about this forgotten and unknown but very urgent and important subject, click here to read „Can Fashion Ever Be Sustainable?”, or Fast Fashion 101 | How It’s Destroying Our Planet because knowledge is one of the most powerful strengths you can have, while ignorance is your worst weakness.
We also have a big surprise for you! Because we want to give you the right to know us better, we have prepared a carefully dedicated About Us page where we will tell you who we are, what our mission is, what we do, a closer look at our team, and many more things! Do not miss this opportunity and click here to check it out. Also, we invite you to take a look at our Pinterest, where we will pin everyday sustainable fashion-related content, clothing designs, and other things that you will surely love!
