I write quite a bit about sustainability, having been into it well before it was fashionable -and I’ve been working in the apparel industry 25+ years. I couldn’t begin to guess how many eco-fashionistas visit my site (how to start a clothing line) but it’s quite a lot.

Re: sizing…your points are well taken. I wrote two entries on that based on a controversy that erupted on the co-op america discussion list. The most pivotal problems are discussed in part two. Consider:

…sizing for the eco market is challenging mostly because it’s bridging two generations. First there’s the grey hairs like me. We’ve been doing the eco thing well before it ever became popular. In this group, you’ll find heavier and older women more comfortable -but not entirely happy- with crunchy granola. The second group are young ones, of which there are two types. The first of the second group are largely tee producers. The second of the second are producing lines of fashion forward apparel constructed of eco fabrics.

The conflict I see is a generational one. The younger designers, most of them likely to be under 30, are designing their sizing to reflect their demography. Far from it being a crime, I think this is ideal. Younger eco consumers are thinner, better educated and more likely to prioritize their purchasing in alignment with their goals (they have fewer children as yet too). Likewise, their products are sold at venues less likely to be visited by the older types. Therefore, since there are fewer grey hairs buying their products, it’s only appropriate that the younger eco crowd address the styling and sizing considerations of their own demography. The conflict is when the older group has decided, that by virtue of these being eco products, that their unique fitting and styling needs should be addressed as well. They tend to be vocally unhappy that the newest eco lines are not available in average sizes (the median). As one woman said: (snipped)

For the most part, I think the latter is an unreasonable expectation. On top of everything else, older hippie types (like me) tend to buy fewer apparel items. This is not to say that mainstream older people can’t jump on the eco bandwagon at this late date, expanding the market potentiality within that demography but I think it behooves that segment to design and produce apparel for themselves. Manufacturing is an equal opportunity business. If you don’t like what’s being offered, you can do it too.

You mention the matter of sustainability in the context of manufacturing. I think this has been sorely missing from the debate and again, a topic I write about a great deal. It is not so easy to make these determinations; is fast fashion sustainable? In many respects, it is. As unpopular as it may make me, you must consider the facts:

The pivotal leader in fast fashion is Zara… The question is, is Zara’s model sustainable? Well, if you consider that everything they produce is pre-sold … and that the size of these lots do not exceed 500 units, and that these are produced by local small sewing contractors near by, it would seem the be true. However, there’s another element which bears discussion, that of style longevity. By its very nature, fashion per se is short lived, obsolescence looms on a very short horizon.

So, are the benefits of disposable fashion as exemplified by Zara mitigated by their lean model? In other words, since they’re not over producing and dumping unwanted goods at discount, is their overall model lean and sustainable?

The concept of a lean manufacturing model in keeping with sustainability were not the kinds of questions being asked on a recent segment of Marketplace Money on NPR. Rather, the segment focused strictly on the costs of disposable fashion. There’s a big difference between rampant push production of fashion commodities versus scaled, pre-sold fashion commodities.

The biggest problem I see today with many eco producers is they’re producing quantities of goods in advance (most often tees); they have no orders to back them up. So, they’re having to dispose of excess inventory in off price markets at drastically reduced prices which further depresses the price integrity of fair trade produced goods. It is insufficient to slap eco fibers into your product and call it good; your entire chain, including the production model you use, must be sustainable. For example, many think that because they’re producing domestically, they are sustainable and while the alternatives are much less palatable (imo), this isn’t necessarily true.

Lastly, there’s the matter of eco-fatigue and one’s commitment and values. Frankly, I’m tired of the whole green thing. It seems to have been watered down into signaling. A Prius is cool; you can signal to anyone around the vehicle that you are in fact, cool. But do you live your values? Buying a reusable shopping bag and recycling your paper, glass and plastic doesn’t cut it either. In Is your strategy patently obvious, pathetic or parasitic? I wrote:

Pathetic:
This is the category in which many start ups fall and it’s been discussed here before… most in this category practically beg for sales appealing to personal values. This usually falls in the vein of “I’m a good person, I recycle, I’m not a sweat shop, I give a[n undefined portion of the proceeds] to charity (assuming there’s something to give) and I’m uber cool, so buy my incredibly overpriced tee shirts”.

With a pitch like this, you haven’t sold anyone on the value of your product. How have you conveyed the value of it? If we want to support a charity, more of the money will go to the charity with direct checks rather than filtering it through you. These days you can’t be heard amid the clamor and din of everyone else who’s also making these claims. And even if this argument were convincing, it’ll take more than your propensity for buying organic fruit to convince us of your social commitments. People are eco-fatigued. If you embrace this as your marketing strategy, you’re better off making a clean break and embracing cause marketing rather than this ambiguous pit. The point is, you must learn to disambiguate the value of who you are (a good person) from the value of your product. If you must rely on personal appeals and your product fails, it’s not that you’re a bad person; it’s that your product is likely mediocre and/or is poorly marketed.

Pathetic appeals are disingenuous and consumers can sense the difference. It’s as tho everyone has this invisible score card they use to keep track of their green citizenry. I want to know more; the barre has been raised. These days, I want to know if you live your values wholly; for example, are you a vegetarian? Becoming a vegetarian does more for the planet than buying local, driving a prius, recycling and going off the grid combined. Unfortunately, too few are willing to make that sacrifice. Like I said, amid the clamor of competing eco-claims, the barre has been raised and whether one is a vegetarian or not serves to sort the wheat from the chaff. Imo of course.
In summary, talk less and do more. Live your values in ways that matter, beyond what is apparent to strangers who see your clothes or what you drive because apparel is largely not sustainable. Live your “offsets”.

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The high street shoulb be involved with designers like us, this how things could change at a massive scale.

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