SUSTAINABLE CLOTHING

The emerging trend of fast fashion has added to the environment burden. La Polo team curates a list for sustainable fashion.

The world of fashion has been no stranger to the rising trend of sustainability. The industry is one of the largest polluters in the world, coming in just behind the oil industry. Designing, developing and manufacturing a small piece of garment may entail numerous environmental hazards. Each step of creating a garment contributes to different forms of environmental pollution, including air and water. The fashion industry as an aggregate is responsible for producing a tenth of all greenhouse gas emissions. It is also responsible for roughly a fifth of all industrial water pollution.

The emerging trend of fast fashion has only added to the environmental burden. Fast fashion is defined as “inexpensive clothing produced rapidly by massmarket retailers in response to the latest trends”. It encourages people to keep up with the latest trends, resulting in mass-scale discardation of out-of-trend clothing. According to a clutch of studies, the onset of globalization in the 1990s further encouraged the rapid growth of the fast fashion industry. Global retail sales of clothing in 2019 reached $1.9 trillion, and the number is expected to zoom to $3 trillion by 2030. While these statistics might seem like a grim prognosis, not all is lost. There are some clothing outlets working to tackle the malicious effects of fashion’s environmental degradation. What’s more, they are actually making a difference!

Here’s a curated list of sustainable clothing brands to check out, if you’re looking to be eco-conscious:

The brand works with a single mission in mind: to bring sustainable fashion to everyone. In fact, it happens to be the first brand in the US that pioneered the concept of a sustainable factory set-up. Reformation was founded by Yael Aflalo in 2009. Today they produce their own clothing with a sharp focus on inculcating suitability into every element that goes into crafting them. The brand has been 100% carbon-neutral since 2015 and has committed to becoming a climate-positive company by 2025, via carbon offsets and the use of more regenerative fibers.

The brand is among the very few to offer upfront information about its raw material sourcing. It pushes for the need to realign our individual needs with that of the environment. The website succinctly illustrates its mission, saying, “Our collection pushes the boundaries of what responsibly grown and ethically manufactured materials can achieve. Using fashion as a pathway to activism, we seek to model what is possible at this critical juncture in our humanity - amplifying voices for change, educating and engaging our community with the stories behind our clothes.”

As the website says, “it is founded by women, run by women, and focused on making products for all women.” The brand brings together a blend of natural, organic materials to manufacture clothing. On offer are numerous non-toxic garments, in a wide array of soft tones. The all-purpose clothing brand keeps the factory close to the office in order for all the products to undergo strict quality control standards laid down by them.

The brand is quite the opposite of fast fashion, or as Glamour puts it: slow fashion. Ozma was founded in 2015 by designer Heidi Baker. Baker drew on her experience from working at Levi’s but inculcated her own little twist: sustainability. The brand was born out of Heidi’s yearning to create a line that supports sustainability in every sense of the word. Through its clothing options, it encourages potential customers to consider the freedom of living with only the essentials and to cherish them. Interestingly, Ozma has a limited line of clothing on offer in order to make high-quality clothes you’ll wear for years to come. All of its clothing is produced locally in L.A., in small, family-run factories that are vetted to quality control standards.

The perfect place to look for your next set of pyjamas! Sleeper describes itself as “a brand of ethically crafted, high-quality, multipurpose garments designed to help you feel beautiful — regardless if you are wearing Sleeper on the streets, or in the comfort of your own home”. It was born in 2014 under the aegis of two former fashion editors Kate Zubarieva and Asya Varetsa. The brand offers clothes crafted from biodegradable materials like linen, EcoVero Rayon viscose, and recycled polyester. To reduce wastage in the process, artisans also produce clothes on a made-toorder basis in the brand’s sewing studios in Kyiv, Ukraine. The brand boasts a long list of celebrity patrons including Eva Chen, Katy

Perry, Brie Larson, Kourtney Kardashian, Aurora James, Kelly

Lynch, Busy Philipps, Chloë Grace Moretz, Zoey

Deutch, Dakota and Elle

Fanning, Veronika

Heilbrunner, and Lena

Dunham, amongst others.

Now this is an odd one, but one of those rarities: a sustainable footwear brand! The brand jumbles together the unlikeliest of raw materials to produce elegantlooking pieces of sustainable footwear, that too with an African design aesthetic: vegetable-tanned leathers, hand-carved wood, and floraldyed feathers, among others. Founder Aurora James says, “Sustainability is at the core of the Brother Vellies brand. We are proud to help create and maintain artisanal jobs around the world by partnering with artisans that have been developing their craft over multiple generations. We seek to lessen the impact of our production practices by being careful with production quantities, minimising waste, reusing materials, and continuously seeking to improve our processes. Sustainability to us means building products that are meant to last, treating one another with respect, and thinking about the impact we are leaving on the world.”