Sustainable Brand Directory
As my work on Amarewear solidified my interested in sustainable fashion, I began curating a directory of brands in hopes of creating a resource for conscious consumers to find alternatives to fast fashion. Since 2019, I’ve continued to find brands with particularly sustainable/regenerative and transparent practices. The directory has shifted platforms a few times but is currently housed in Airtable, which allows visitors to easily search, filter, and sort brands according to their interests. Any publicly-available information regarding a brand’s materials, production processes, packaging, circular/regenerative/CO2-related initiatives, and charitable efforts or partnerships is included in its profile. I do my best to feature a variety of price points and styles so that everyone can discover at least one brand they’re excited to try!
Learn more about sustainable fashion
Beyond the typical concerns of wasteful overproduction and worker’s rights in fast fashion, we must consider water use, chemical management, carbon emissions from transportation between every stage of the supply chain, connections to agriculture through natural fiber harvesting, harm to biodiversity, and more. I won’t pretend to be an expert on best practices in fashion — I’m always learning more! — and I encourage you to explore the following resources:
Fashion Revolution: Explore their annual Fashion Transparency Index, online resources, and their free MOOC, Fashion’s Future: The Sustainable Development Goals.
The Slow Factory: An organization addressing the intersecting crises of climate justice & human rights through cultural change, science and design. They offer a free climate education series called Open Edu with live webinars on various topics — check out some of their past recorded sessions!
Good On You: A website and app that rates thousands of brands on their environmental sustainability and ethics. Fun fact: I cold-emailed to intern here during my freshman year of college, where I learned a lot more about relevant brand rating criteria!
Common third-party certifications, such as the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS), and OEKO-TEX.
My Coursera Collection, Behind the Seams: Becoming a Sustainable Fashion Entrepreneur. When Coursera was launching a new feature of user-created learning tracks, I was invited to create my own collection as a mentor for the Fashion as Design MOOC.