We Can’t Afford the Price Tag on Affordable, Ethical Fashion Brands
Would you classify yourself as a responsible shopper? Have you been more inclined these days to purchase sustainable clothing, recycle your package wrappers, or repost things on social media that shame fast fashion? You might be one of those people who more recently decided to do their part in saving the planet, one non-plastic item at a time, or perhaps this has always been the way you shop. Either way, the trend of supporting brands that are ethical, sustainable, and socially impactful, has taken over social media. While this is a positive spin on our spending habits, this ability to spend money supporting ethical, eco-friendly brands remains out of reach for the average consumer.
Our fantasy of saving the planet by buying items not wrapped in plastic or supporting a local community of weavers through items sold via a luxury brand is firmly lodged within the grasp of the upper middle class and wealthy. It is ironic that those who can afford to shop at ethical brands are not the ones suffering from the downsides of fast fashion –– sweatshops, the exploitation of prison labor, and landfills filling up with barely used clothes. Ads, social media, and broader marketing strategies have led us to believe we can all be responsible shoppers, when it is, in fact, inaccessible and unaffordable to most. We need to examine this gap closely if we as consumers truly care about what fast fashion is doing to our societies, economies, and the planet.
As long as capitalism makes it a no brainer for large corporations, as well as fashion conglomerates to produce clothing cheaply to pad their margins, and while the influencers and celebrities we love keep promoting them, the possibility of sustainable, ethical fashion being the norm will continue to be a speck on the horizon. Some influencers that I identify with –– mostly women of color or Muslim women –– post pictures on their feed styling Fashionnova, Zara, H&M, Adidas, Ivy Park, all brands that are either high end or fast fashion. Do they look good? Yes, of course. Is it part of these influencer’s brands to promote pro-sustainable fashion? No. In fact, they probably would not get as many PR packages for makeup and clothing if all they wanted to promote was sustainable fashion –– there simply aren’t enough sustainable brands out there popular enough to be showcased on the body of an influencer. Additionally, if a sustainable brand does get a shoutout from an influencer it's a PR stunt or a one time thing. On the other hand, if an influencer’s brand aligns with promoting exclusively sustainable products, their followers will quickly come to realize they can’t afford anything the influencer is promoting, which defeats the purpose. Thus, both sustainable fashion and influencers are in a strange position here. The only real solution is quantity. There have to be more ethical brands out there to choose from.
Options for conscious consumers are slowly expanding. You can buy natural shower bombs in reusable glass containers from ZeroWaste, or menswear from Kotn, or some comfy looking shirts and shorts from Pact. Mind you, these are the more affordable brands that I found, but there are far more high end brands that have crewneck sweatshirts that sell for almost $100 or jeans for $200. If you ever wanted regular clothing from ethical brands you’d be hard pressed to find fashionable options for less than $50. However, it is completely feasible to make these items affordable and accessible. The brands I mentioned above have proven that everyday clothes can be made by people who are paid a fair wage and materials that weren’t sprayed by pesticides. Unfortunately, just like there are brands dedicated to saving the environment and boosting the economies of small villages, there are brands like Carcel and Project Pieta whose “ethical” brand needs to be questioned.
Although fast fashion has made access to cheap labor the norm, the form of cheap labor we hear about the most are from sweatshops in India or China. Exploitation of cheap labor even exists in America. There is also prison labor, where inmates essentially work for pennies and don’t have basic employee rights because, well, they are in prison. Carcel is a company that prides itself on setting up and running, “our own production sites inside of women’s prisons in order to provide an opportunity for financial inclusion and skills development, so women can support themselves, their families and save up for release.” This is marketed and written as a positive aspect of their brand, people need a reason to purchase their clothes. They are set up in Thai and Peruvian women’s prisons, where most are incarcerated due to non-violent or poverty related crimes. You are probably wondering: What is problematic about this?
The least expensive item on Carcel’s website is €175. In Thailand that is 6452.02 Thai Bahts. In Peru that is 775 Peruvian Soles. For a mere shirt. There is almost no information about how much a “fair wage” is for these women in prison, nor how much of a cut these women get from the sales of the clothing. On top of that, Carcel doesn’t seem to be dedicated to eradicating the poverty in Thailand or Peru with the sales of their outrageously priced shirts, despite the fact that it is the reason they have access to this prison labor force in the first place. That money doesn’t go back into the Thai or Peruvian communities, and the likelihood that Carcel has a store in a quaint Thai or Peruvian neighborhood is pretty slim. Labor pours from these prisons and the money is never seen by those communities; it is not a circular, mutually beneficial structure. This is not the kind of sustainable, ethical fashion we should be spending our money on. Companies like Carcel are just as exploitative and problematic as larger fast fashion companies, despite trying to hide behind the guise of sustainability and minimal waste.
Another example is a company called Project Pieta, a Peruvian streetwear brand started by a French designer who happened upon a male prison in Peru and was appalled at its conditions. Thinking all they needed was some employment, this designer created Project Pieta, dedicated to employing current inmates to make garments. While the positive of this company is that inmates who leave the prison can continue to work for Project Pieta and get employment elsewhere through recommendations, there is still a grey area in terms of wages. The “inmates are paid a portion of the sale price for each unit of clothing they produce”, but when items range from $17 to $100 per garment, one has to wonder how much of that the inmates are actually receiving. This system is imperfect and flawed, and its use of prison labor should be criticised.
With issues of price, access, and companies using aspects of ethical and sustainable fashion to make questionable supply chains, what can we do to shorten the gap and make this new area of fashion more feasible and less sketchy?
Firstly, we need to educate more designers on holistic fashion practices so they can understand supply chain options. Very few universities have programs dedicated to the study of ethical and sustainable fashion. Since it is still considered niche, ethical and sustainable fashion needs to become normalized as a field of study, and as a profitable area to work in post graduation. If students don’t see a real, immediate future in sustainable fashion, how can they possibly create more ethical and sustainable clothing? Secondly, we need to normalize and rejuvenate the traditional ways of creating clothing such as weaving, dyeing, and hand-stitching. Items that have these attributes are typically higher priced because of the cost of labor, but it is only this high because weavers and dyers are only really valued as a marketing sales point, and their craft is in high demand and in short supply. Therefore, we need to be training people to enter into the industry at these levels of clothing creation; otherwise, the processes that make a shirt more ethical and sustainable will continue to be out of reach due to cost.
Finally, we have to continue to force brands to be far more transparent about their supply chain so that we can continue to educate ourselves as consumers and make better shopping choices. It usually takes a scandal or a PR nightmare for a large fashion company to turn itself around, apologize for exploiting workers, and only then try something new. There needs to be entities put in place to check supply chains and ascertain that the way clothes are made are ethical but also cost effective. Exploiting labor shouldn’t be the only way companies can be most profitable. By making certain avenues of creating clothing more transparent, we are also opening ourselves up for conversations surrounding capitalism, small businesses, supporting local economies, and rejuvenating withering clothing making traditions around the world.
Sustainable fashion has so much potential, but its cost prohibitive clothing items and at times questionable business practices, make it a prime area of improvement. We have to be brave enough to step into what this might look like. It will take individuals, brands, businesses, weavers, dyers, seamstresses — all stakeholders in the fashion industry — to bridge the gap between sustainable fashion and the rest of the world. Our planet, our communities, and our traditions depend on the expansion of this space.
Artwork by Fatema AlFardan