By Amalie Meland
Ethical fashion and sustainable fashion: what is the difference? Both terms describe the sourcing, manufacturing, and development of clothing. The difference is that sustainability is about the environment, and what impact these things have on the environment. Ethical fashion is about how the business is run and how the workers are treated.
Edited market analyst Kayla Marci told WWD in 2019 that: “Without clear information from fashion companies on how, where, and by whom clothing is made, consumers often become overwhelmed and easily susceptible to greenwashing.”
Ethical fashion refers to clothing made in ways that value social welfare and worker rights. For vegans, ethical fashion may also refer to the avoidance of pelts, leather, and animal fibres in the clothes.
Being sustainable does not include being ethical. Brands can start to use better fabrics that are better for the environment, but if they still make apparel in big factories that barely pay their workers a living wage, it is not ethically made.
As you may expect, fast fashion brands are among the worst at making their clothes ethically. But they aren’t the only ones. A New Yorker exposé in 2018 showed that some luxury brands use cheap immigrant labour. This makes it even more complicated when looking for clothes made ethically.
Experts have several tips on how to buy ethically made clothes. Read on…
Checking where a garment is made is not enough
Ethical fashion is about respecting fundamental human rights, regardless of where the clothing is produced. According to Brooke Roberts-Islam, London Met Newsweek panellist, we often think bad factories are located in Asia, and that this is the only place where workers are barely paid, the work conditions are bad, and the workers have no rights. But that is not right. This happens everywhere where fashion is located.
Brooke said: “The fashion industry has a problem; it’s not that Asia has a problem.” Many people think as long as the clothes are not made in Asia, they are ethically made, but that is not true. There are bad working conditions in factories located all over the world, including here in the UK. More research is needed to find out if something is made ethically.
Check the label
Jasmine Owens, writer and researcher at Ethical Consumer Magazine says to check the label before you buy an item and look for the FAIRTRADE mark on the label. If a garment features the original Fairtrade mark it means that all of its contents are certified by Fairtrade International.
All of the ingredients or materials in the product are fully traceable — kept separate from non-certified products from field to shelf. The workers that produced the item had safe working conditions, fair pay and other rights. On the other hand, the term “fair trade” is not a protected term: companies can market their brand as ethical, when in reality they don’t know if their workers actually are being treated fairly.
Transparency
“Transparency is really important,” said Delphine Chui, London Met Newsweek panellist. Carry Somers, founder of Fashion Revolution explains transparency like this: “Transparency is when companies know and share publicly #WhoMadeMyClothes—from who stitched them right through to who dyed the fabric and who farmed the cotton—under what conditions, and with what environmental impacts.”
A truly conscious company will make transparency a top priority and have a section or page on their website where they communicate their ethical and sustainability sourcing policies. If they don’t have that on their website, it’s probably because the clothes are not made ethically, and they don’t want to write about that so their customers can see.
Websites and tools to help you
Different tools exist to check if a brand is ethical. Good on You is the world’s leading source for fashion brand ratings. It consists of a group of campaigners, fashion professionals, scientists, writers and developers that have come together to provide an easy-to-understand score of fashion brands. You can discover the very best fashion from around the world and learn everything you need to know about ethical and sustainable fashion. There is also an app called ShopEthical, that helps you track a company’s records with ethical and environmental impact.
Leave a Reply