Don't Forget the Ethical

By Lauren Kammerdiener

As a new academic year begins and Sustainable Style resumes its regular activities, I wanted to take a moment here on the blog to reflect upon an important aspect of the fashion revolution movement that often gets lost: the ethical side of things.

The ethicality of our clothes should be just as important to us as their supposed sustainability, but so often we get so caught up in doing what’s good for the planet that we often forget we also need to be doing what’s good for people. Even while researching for this article, my Google search for ‘ethical fashion stats’ mostly returned merely ‘sustainable’ ones; it’s a cause that in the media often gets lost or confused with its sustainable sister.

The best place to start with ethical fashion is to think about who’s making our clothes. Even in today's textile industry, there’s no such thing as fully machine-made garments; every factory, no matter how large, still has some kind of human team behind it operating those machines. There are people behind every piece in your closet. But because of the disconnect fast fashion has fostered between us and our clothing, especially with the advent of online shopping, it is often far too easy to forget that fact.

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And there’s a reason high street chains can charge so little for a plain white tee － they’re barely paying whoever made it. According to a 2019 ethical fashion report, only 5% of the over 100 companies surveyed could demonstrate they were paying their final stage facility workers a living wage, or what they need in order to comfortably survive in their local region. And unfortunately for us as consumers, we’ve gotten used, perhaps even entitled, to these low prices. They make ethically-produced clothing appear suspiciously expensive in comparison, and foster in us a reluctance to invest elsewhere.

Though it may be difficult to visualize in our own wealthier Western twenty-first century contexts, modern slavery continues to be an ongoing issue, and the fashion industry one of its greatest perpetrators. In the US, it’s often foreign migrants desperate for work and with no real legal rights who find themselves exploited for the sake of cheap labor, and thus ultimately cheap clothes. Right here in the UK recent reports have exposed ‘dark factories’ on British soil exploiting their labor forces with the government’s awareness.

Transparency is the largest keyword when it comes to the ethicality of fashion. Most brands don’t disclose any information about their supply chains. Some claim to know nothing about their suppliers at all. And, honestly, you really have to wonder how, in today’s data-obsessed age, this could even be possible. For obvious economic and logistical reasons, fashion brands must at least have some knowledge of what the factories they’re employing are doing. So what reason is there, we have to wonder, to keep all that a secret?

Just as with sustainability, as a consumer, personal research is the most important tool you can wield to make a difference. If you’re on a brand’s site, and they claim to care about and people and planet but can’t offer you any concrete evidence that they’re actually doing anything about that, on their about page or wherever that may be, then they probably don’t care as much as they claim to. Over the past few years, we’ve seen the fashion economy slowly transform into one where people are becoming more aware of their purchasing power, and more curious about the production of their clothes. Thus, many brands have rightly capitalized upon that, proudly touting the difference they’re making, as they’re finding more and more that they can gain customer business and support through that avenue. So if a brand can’t give you that behind-the-scenes information, they’re probably not taking much action at all, or worse contributing to these problems, as you’d think that in the online climate of public activism, they’d want to market any difference they’re making.

Another side to ethical fashion we have to take into consideration is the issue of accessibility. Charity shop prices have been on the rise for several years now, as secondhand has become more mainstream, and while the prospect of more people turning to this as an alternative for stocking their closets is great, we still need to remember that charity shopping is still, at the end of the day, a form of consumption. It’s not a new excuse to be hoarding clothes, and, as with any of our consumer purchases, we really ought to be focusing only on buying only what we truly need in order to avoid pushing out those who charity shop for reasons of affordability rather than sustainability. While charity shop prices have risen, fast fashion has only cheapened, and if we want those who can’t afford or don’t have access to more expensive ethical and sustainable brands to be able to participate in the fashion revolution, then we need to do our part to ensure that still have the option to do so. In our current global economy, it is an unfortunate truth that a sustainable, ethical lifestyle is so often a privileged one, but we can still take our own conscious steps to be aware of that privilege.

There is also something to be said for the ethicality of grace, of avoiding judging others who may still occasionally indulge in fast fashion, or use cling wrap, or buy a plastic water bottle in a pinch. None of us are or ever will be perfect, and this kind of judgment only inhibits others from joining the movement. 

I also want to acknowledge the privilege we have in even conducting these conversations, in me even sitting here and writing this article. I am privileged enough to have the leisure to research these topics, and my interest in them is really only because I’ve been in privileged spaces like this university where I’ve been able to attend events that have made me more aware and conscious of them. Not everyone has those opportunities, and I think we need to take that into consideration in our discussions, especially with those who have only just begun to indulge their curiosity.

At the end of the day, sustainable and ethical fashion should not be about choosing one over the other, people or planet. Our everyday decisions, our choices as consumers, should always aspire to consider both. In the western-washed consumerism we are bombarded with every day on social media and in our shopping habits, it’s environmentalism that has become the hot, cool topic. But here at Sustainable Style, I want to ensure that we don’t forget the ethical. People and planet. That's whom we’re fighting for. And just like with sustainability, it’s our demands as many individuals that become a collective which brands are then forced to respond and make changes to. If we demand that those who are making our clothes should be paid a living wage and make it clear we’re willing to front the cost, then maybe we can start to make more of a difference. And in the mean time, it’s our responsibility to take that ethical mindset into our local communities in order to close gaps in accessibility and take other budding activists under our wing. The collective ethical effort — that’s what I want us to be here for.