What is a sustainable fashion blog about? Where to start to make your own style ethical?
Buy clothes from producers that take into account their workers: the fashion industry is one of the major employers across the world.
Workers in the textile industry worldwide receive a minimum wage that is much lower than the living wage.
In fact, many big fashion brands move their production in the countries where the minimum legal salary is lower, without taking into account the living wage.
A tragedy occurred in Bangladesh in 2013, the collapse of the Rana Plaza building, is an evidence of the non-existent value gave to the life of workers in the clothing industry: despite having been reported to the managers that the building had developed dangerous structural cracks, they sent the workers back to the factory; the building collapsed the next day resulting in 1134 dead and about 2500 injured people.
Before buying a piece of clothing you should ask yourself how much the fashion brand pays its workers and under what conditions their work takes place.
You can check which big brands have agreed to publish informations about working conditions in their supply chains on the Clean Clothes Campaign website
Nowadays fashion means suffering for millions of animals.
Almost 70 million animals like minks, raccoons, foxes, seals, stoats, rabbits, lambs, dogs and cats are bred every year for their fur.
Every year millions of geese and ducks are bred for the fashion industry. The feathers used for the padding come mainly from the plucking of live geese raised intensively.
A sustainable fashion blog should explain how to avoid animal derived materials such as: leather, fur, silk, feathers, whool, cashmere and angora.
As a matter of fact there are many ethical clothing alternatives that do not involve the death or suffering of any living being.
The Animal Free project has instituted the “Rating AFF”, the first ethics rating for evaluating companies based on their non-use of materials of animal origin.
You can check the Rating AFF of your favourite brand on the Animal Free Fashion website.
Textile industries release hazardous chemicals in the rivers of the countries where the production takes place; harmful substances are present in the garment at the time of purchase and continue to be released in the ocean after every washing machine cycle.
The aim of a sustainable fashion blog is to promote the use of ecofriendly materials, with low carbon footprint and chemical free.
You can find the list of big fashion brands that have committed to detoxify their supply chain by 2020 on the Greenpeace Detox Catwalk page.
The clothes produced according to the fast fashion criteria are meant to be quickly replaced by the next products, so it’s no surprise that they soon get out of fashion.
It’s not unusual to buy clothing according to the latest trends and end up with tricky to match clothes that we don’t like either.
Get out of the mindset of buying products that you will wear a few times: investing money in a high quality garment that will not go out of fashion and that can be combined with many other clothes is much more stylish than following the latest fashions imposed by companies marketing strategies.
Blindly following fashion influencers is not glamorous.
Learning how to repair, adapt and renew your clothes is the best practice and it is a critical theme for a sustainable fashion blog as it is especially important for reducing the amount of textile waste that is produced each year.
Repairing your clothes does not make you a loser, on the contrary, having to constantly renew your wardrobe means that you have to give up many things.
Probably the easiest thing you can do to buy sustainable clothes is to buy second-hand, even if extending the life of the clothes does not make them 100% sustainable, it helps to reduce the impact they have on the environment.
Equally selling or giving away your used clothes instead of throwing them in the garbage will lower the carbon footprint of the product.
The first step you can take for smarter purchases is to find out if your favorite brands are aligned with your values: to help you I have created a comparison table for some big fashion brands for their commitment to transparency on their workers’ conditions, the commitment to avoid using materials derived from animals and the commitment to stop the use of toxic chemicals.
Subscribe to the mailing list to receive the pdf file with the fashion brands comparison table and my updates! (make sure you check your spam box as it sometimes gets caught there!)
