On Sustainable Apparel

This is not your typical article about sustainable apparel. Because here's the truth - sustainability doesn't sell. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't still try.

What is "sustainability"?

The first problem is what does "sustainable" apparel even mean? Is it organically grown cotton that degrades over time or recycling plastic waste into polyester fabric? The former uses copious amounts of water and manual labor that typically only the most marginalized worker will do at scale. Conversely, others detest the feeling of synthetic fabric and the idea that it won't decompose in landfills. For every argument for something, there's a counter against it. Against this backdrop of conflicting voices, a plethora of well-intentioned industry certifications and badges have emerged to "aid" the consumer in deciding what is most sustainable - Climate Neutral, Bluesign, OEKOTEX, BCorp, OCS, FTF, FTC, FTI, FWF...the list goes on. But does the average consumer know what these actually mean? To a certain extent, it's human nature to trust authoritative certifications even if we're not fully sure how they're defined. If it's got an acronym, it must be better. But if every major apparel brand is touting some type of sustainability claim or certification, does that mean we've solved the problem? Or is it becoming feel-good marketing that all starts to sound the same?

Why does it matter in apparel?

Fashion is the 2nd or 3rd most polluting industry in the world depending how deep down the supply chain you go. On the production side, apparel manufacturing consumes resources, generates carbon emissions and is very labor intensive always in search of the cheapest human capital. Clothes today are still by and large made by human hands. But since the heyday of industrialization in Europe and America through the 1960's, manufacturing has always chased the lowest wage base to India/Bangladesh to China to Vietnam today and what many think will be Africa tomorrow. While there are certainly individual bad actors on the manufacturing side, it's important to note that this race to the bottom in terms of labor cost is largely driven by the insatiable demand for cheap clothing from consumers - primarily consumers from developed nations. While we may be outraged by images of environmental disasters and sweatshops, as a group we still want the best deal. When we score that $9.97 brand name sweatpant at Costco, we'd rather not know the specifics on why it's that cheap. 

Outside of the pollution concerns and the ethical dilemmas of sweatshops, there's an even bigger, more tangible problem lurking - how do we dispose of all this cheap clothing we're producing? In layman's terms, think about it this way. Unless you're a nudist, you wear clothes. It's one thing that almost all cultures around the world have in common - we all learned to wear clothes regardless of race, religion or geography. In corporate lingo, that's a giant Total Addressable Market (TAM). And for better or worse, it's only getting bigger. Not only is the population growing but with industrialization, globalization and influencer driven marketing, we're buying more per capita as well. Where do you think this clothing goes once you've thrown it out or donated it to the thrift store? Despite what you might think, the materials making up that cheap $5 t-shirt are going to last just as long as the $100 designer one when they get thrown out. And only a very small percentage of the clothes you donate to the thrift store actually get reused in the local economy. The rest often gets dumped in "developing" countries flooding their markets and destroying any local textile industry. Today's fast fashion and influencer driven haul culture is exponentially accelerating this supply of unwanted, used physical clothing.

So no, we haven't solved the sustainability problem in apparel. It's getting worse.  

But do consumers care?

Short answer, No. Or at least not enough that it factors into their purchase decision. How do we know this? Because we have an affiliated sustainable apparel brand that HAS invested heavily in pursuing certifications, using innovative materials and producing at fair trade facilities. We've found that our customers buy our products because they like the design, comfort and feel of the actual product - not because of how many trees we planted to offset emissions, how much plastic we reused or how ethically it was made. Not complaining, just an objective look at what we're seeing in practice.   

So what is douentza doing?

Douentza did not start out with "sustainability" as one of it's core values. We just wanted to make a great pair of men's pants. But once you go down the rabbit hole of how clothing is actually made, consumed and disposed, you can't help but try to do it a little better even if there's no immediate reward. It's just the right thing to do. So here are some of our lines drawn in sand (and drawn in sand they are, because we hope to adapt and improve as we learn more).