Sustainable Fashion Tips for a More Eco-Friendly Closet
Long gone are the days when sustainable fashion wasn't actually fashionable. While the ethical fashion movement once meant Birkenstocks and granola garments, thanks to a growing number of eco-conscious designers and sustainable clothing brands, sustainable clothing is actually cute AF these days.
So if you're still shopping at Zara, now's the time to quit cold turkey. With these easy sustainable fashion tips, you'll learn easy ways to be more sustainable in fashion without giving up great style.
And to suit your sartorial fancy, we’ve included pics from eco-friendly fashion designer Stella McCartney’s Fall/Winter outspoken ad campaigns.
These sustainable fashion tips will help you stay eco-friendly in style.
Stop Shopping at Fast-Fashion Brands
Put your $$ where your mouth is
It's simple. Quit buying fast fashion. As consumers, we vote with our wallets every time we step up to the cash register. When you purchase from fast fashion companies that cut ethical and environmental corners to offer low prices, you send a message that you value sale racks more than sustainable supply chains.
Consumers are getting smart these days, but fast fashion brands are getting smarter too. Unfortunately, most of the recycling programs and sustainable lines you see are simply greenwashing marketing schemes meant to pull the wool over naive consumers' eyes. But not you, not anymore.
Look for Certifications
Peep the tags and care labels
These days, buzzwords like green, organic, and recycled are thrown around without much thought. Greenwashing—when fashion brands use false or misleading information to make themselves appear more sustainable than they actually are—can be quite deceptive. When a fast fashion company boasts their new line is "sustainable" or that their clothes are now made using organic cotton and recycled polyester, there is often little concrete information to back up these claims.
As a smart consumer, you no longer can take a brand's sustainability and ethics statements at face value. You should only believe a brand if there are legitimate certifications to back them up. Here are a few ethical fashion certifications to look for:
Global Organic Textile Standard
Oeko-Tex
Fair-Trade Certified
Certified B Corporation
PETA-Approved Vegan
Bluesign
If you're new to shopping for sustainable clothing, use Good On You or The Good Trade to help you out. These advocates for ethical fashion provide rankings of major brands based on their sustainability and ethics.
Purchase Less Clothing
Buy less and buy smart
As much as it sucks to hear it, the easiest way to be sustainable in fashion is to buy less shit. While this certainly doesn't sound ideal, it's an important step. Slowing down the fashion cycle— even a bit— will reduce the amount of clothing being produced and thrown away.
Instead of purchasing cheap, trendy items that you'll only wear a few times, purchase fewer high-quality pieces that can be worn for seasons to come. If you have the financial means to, it's vital that you spend your money supporting sustainable fashion brands. If you don't have the dough to spend at expensive ethical brands, wear vintage clothing instead.
Thanks to a growing number of affordable, sustainable fashion brands (eehrm, Zeitgeist) you can still look just as stylish in sustainable streetwear and vintage clothing that fits your budget.
Wear Items More Times Between Washes
Who likes doing laundry anyway?
Unless you live under a rock, you've probably heard the word microplastics a lot lately, so we won't go into deets. Long story short, these ocean-ruining little pieces of plastic are bad news. Think of them as little 5mm long Mitch McConnells.
Unfortunately, many popular fabrics are made with plastic-based fibers and a lengthy list of toxic chemicals. Any time you wear polyester, nylon, rayon, spandex, faux fur, faux leather, acrylic, fleece, or taffeta, you're essentially wearing plastic.
Here’s a startling statistic about fashion: a single load of laundry can shed up to 700,000 microfibers— most of which are plastic-based. Now, multiply that by how many loads of laundry you do each week. Multiply that by all of N.Y.C... then all of the country!!! Are you starting to see the problem?
That's why it's important to only wash a garment when you need to. The majority of items will do just fine being worn multiple times before being laundered. Seriously, a Tide to Go pen and a bottle of Chanel #5 can do wonders.
Wash Your Clothes Correctly
Save money and keep your clothes looking their best
Learning to do your own laundry is an important step in becoming an adult. Unfortunately, few of us understand how to wash our clothes correctly.
After a few shrunken sweaters and mistakenly tie-dyed socks, you'll learn that those little symbols on the care label actually matter. Correctly washing your clothing helps extend the life of your garments and keep them looking fresh for longer. Print a guide to laundry care symbols to hang in your laundry room.
If items need to be dry cleaned, be sure to use an eco-friendly dry cleaner that does not use toxic chemicals.
Make Due & Mend
Show your clothes some love with simple repairs
If you're shopping correctly and only purchasing items you truly love, you should want them to last forever. Society currently tells us that it's okay to discard clothing at the first sign of damage. How many times have you said, "it's fine, it was cheap anyway," after snagging something you just bought? It's time to unlearn what fast fashion has taught us and make mending cool again.
Purchase a small sewing kit to do simple repairs like stitching a small hole closed or reattaching a lost button.
Dispose of Unwanted Clothing Properly
Rule #1: Never throw old clothes in the bin
If there's one thing to remember, it's that you should never throw clothing in the garbage can. According to the Sustainable and Recycled Textiles Association, 95% of textiles can be recycled or repurposed.
According to a Savers survey, 62% of people threw items away because they believed they would not be accepted by a donation center. This is a common misconception. Clothing items that cannot be resold as-is can be repurposed as rags or insulation. So yes, even your old undies can be put to good use.
Be wary of fast fashion brands offering in-store recycling. These companies are not trying to save the planet; they're trying to convince you (often with the help of an enticing coupon as a thank you) to purchase more.
Educate Yourself
Read, listen, watch, and learn
Fashion is one of the most polluting industries in the world, second only to oil. When we only see the finished garment, it's easy to become disconnected from the pollution and poverty it took to make it.
As fashion lovers, it's our responsibility not only to understand the full extent of the problem, but to learn the steps we must take to solve it. Watching environmental documentaries, reading fashion magazines, and listening to educational podcasts can help you understand the fashion industry's deeper issues.
Here are a few of our favorites:
The True Cost— a 2015 documentary that pulls back the curtain on fast fashion
The Business of Fashion Podcast— a podcast series that often features sustainable fashion designers and forward-thinking industry leaders
The Conscious Closet— an easy read that helps you build a more sustainable, ethical wardrobe
Vote. Vote. Vote.
And I cannot stress this enough, vote
As if you haven't heard this enough times already this year, here's a friendly reminder that it's your democratic duty to vote. While you may not see the direct connection between who you vote for and what you wear, the two are deeply intertwined. Your government establishes the environmental regulations that fashion companies must follow.
Use your vote to elect politicians that support rejoining the Paris Climate Accord and investing in clean energy. In addition to voting, sign petitions and attend protests for issues that matter to you.
Demand Accountability & Transparency from Fashion Brands
Encourage lasting change throughout the entire fashion industry
If there's a brand you love that is no longer up to your standards, reach out to them and let them know you'll no longer be supporting them due to their standpoint on sustainability and ethics.
It's time that consumers demand brands be more transparent. Far too many companies do not disclose information about their supply chains and environmental impacts. While you may not think your email makes much of a difference, believe me, it does.
Write Your Representative
Nerdy but worth it
For the truly dedicated, there's always the option to write your representatives. Your local, state, and national government makes decisions that directly affect the fashion industry. Urge your representatives to support environmental regulations and demand accountability from the companies they govern. To help small designers and retailers, ask your government to tax large corporations that are negatively impacting fashion (read: Amazon).
Images c/o Stella McCartney
