where to shop

nothing to wear and nowhere to shop: a diary of my ongoing quest to find ethical, sustainable, and reasonably priced fashion.

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“The whole idea of [the circular economy] is creating no waste,” says Julie Gilhart, a creative business consultant who counts Amazon and LVMH among her clients and has worked with the CFDA to establish a sustainability initiative. “There should be no end of life of anything. Nothing should just sit in landfill.”

https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/news-analysis/how-patagonia-transformed-the-circular-economy

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nudie jeans

pros: designed in sweden, nudie jeans are unisex, though the site shows only men wearing their designs. their comprehensive production guide traces their certified organic cotton denim from seed to retail, and they consistently audit their supply chain. they will repair your jeans for free in any of their retail stores.

cons: their site doesn’t specify the rise, but this is a REALLY MINOR con. ime their high rises have a 9.25″ rise.

i wholeheartedly encourage you to buy nudie; i have six pairs that have been patched and repaired countless times. i first heard about nudies a decade ago while talking to a bartender who was wearing the most butt-uplifting jeans i had ever seen. i used to wear the high kai but, that style has been discontinued, so my next order will have to be for the pipe led, their new high-rise cut.

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Rêve En Vert

pros: a retailer, not a single brand, Rêve En Vert (dream in green) is like an eco-conscious net-a-porter, with sustainability, fair trade, and recycled/upcycled materials as a forefront of their mission.

cons: the price point. yeow.

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eileen fisher

eileen fisher has pledged to transform much of its business by 2020: to use only organic cottons and linens, tencel instead of rayon, and recycled polyester; they also want 30% of their dyes to be environmentally responsible.

that’s not the same as 100%, but to be fair, it is an enormous brand. you can find all of their organic bluesign certified dyed apparel here:

http://www.eileenfisher.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=bluesign+organic

their clothing has definitely become more fashion-forward, and it is friendly to all body types--tall, plus, short, etc--who are interested in looking like a benevolent cult leader from a space colony. 

cons: the only flaw in these clothes is that they are so unstructured they are flirting dangerously with the exit to pajama town. but, hey, throw some jewelry on top and a real grownup shoe, like an oxford, and you’re in the HOV lane to arty weirdo.

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You and you alone will build our future by supporting what you believe in. No business acts unilaterally, no cause moves forward of its own accord. The machine is powered by those who buy into it. We can tell you how our machine works, but it’s your choice to put gas in the tank. If you are able to trust that the people you give your money to will make the right decisions and do the right thing, and you are allowed (and able) to challenge them when you think their intentions are misguided, we’ll all be better off.

https://elizabethsuzann.com/blogs/stories/money-talk

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hackwith design house

pros: lisa hackwith makes arty clothes in minneapolis out of crazy-thick fabrics in sizes from 0 to 28 in a ton of categories--bridal, swim, outerwear, etc. the look is a younger, more progressive eileen fisher, and the clothes are neither tight nor body-conscious.

cons: there’s no specificity about their supply chain, so it’s unclear where the materials are sourced from.

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lacausa

pros: lacausa makes breezy, unstructured clothing in los angeles, at a decent price point under “ethical conditions” and is carried really widely, at chains like anthropologie and club monaco. their sizing is generous and their styles seem to live solidly in the free-people-esque-medium-bore-hippie department. i think you probably need a natural whimsy to pull these clothes off. for example once I tried on a pink satin jumpsuit of theirs that made me look like the inside of a bunny’s ear; i wanted it to be solange but it was more escaped acrobat.

they also have petite sizing available.

cons: they don’t really specify what they consider ethical conditions (presumably manufacturing) and they do not define how they source their fabrics.

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siizu

pros: siizu uses %100 eco-friendly and organic fabrics from mongolia and china, and they ship direct from the factory to the consumer. their website has a page that shows images of each factory and has brief interviews with the factory owners.

the clothes are all natural fabrics in solid, basic colors with decent hemlines.

cons: no petite or tall sizes

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“The problem is not sustainability — the problem is the ever-increasing demand for fast fashion. Fast fashion will never be sustainable as its business model is based on producing huge volumes, incredibly quickly, very cheaply so that we can buy more clothes. Fast fashion equals disposable fashion and unvalued lives of the hidden people who work at the bottom of the supply chain. The fast fashion business model also forces factories to use unregulated sub-contractors to deliver to the timescales demanded.”

https://www.businessoffashion.com/community/voices/discussions/can-fashion-industry-become-sustainable/three-years-on-from-rana-plaza-has-anything-changed-sustainability-safety-worker-welfare

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melissa joy manning

pros: melissa joy manning uses only recycled metals and conflict-free stones to create natural, wildly witchy jewelry. their customer service is amazing: last year i lost an mjm earring and they re-created another for me to match.

cons: some of the pieces seem outrageously expensive; it seems to me that jewelry price points are entirely based on perception of demand as opposed to actual demand, but i think there is so much variety at mjm on the lower end of the scale that you can still find great pieces without blowing your budget.

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girlfriend collective

i’m waiting for my leggings to arrive from girlfriend collective, a seattle-based company that is giving away its entire first production run in lieu of more traditional marketing and advertising. the leggings will retail for $70 and are made entirely from plastic bottles in a factory in vietnam; i’ll update this post with a review when i have them in hand, but it’s nice to see synthetic athleticwear made sustainably. 

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the reformation

pros: the reformation started using only deadstock fabric to manufacture their womenswear in los angeles, but now source new fabrics and track the carbon emissions, water use, and waste generated in each product, visible on the item page. it’s trendy enough to occupy much of the space that nasty gal, zara, or urban outfitters might otherwise take up in your brain, and there’s a fair amount of semiformalwear.

cons: the clothes are SUPER tight, with high slits and low necklines that seem pretty easy to age out of. the price points are a little high for clothing that is generally made of polyester fabrics and unlined, and i wish they still made deadstock clothing.

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everlane

pros: everlane shows and tells you where each and every garment is made and how much it costs, with photographs, histories, and data about the factories they use to manufacture.

the company started with a single shirt and has grown to include outerwear, shoes, handbags and pants for both men and women. the look is modern without being particularly trendy; nice drapes, no prints, all solid colors, decent hem lengths and necklines. the fabrics are natural: mostly cotton, wool, silk and leather. it’s a real gattaca look, which i personally find super stylish.

cons: no petite or tall sizes, which for me is the only thing that separates them from becoming the next j.crew, and it’s not totally clear if they can source every piece of their supply chain.