When I googled \u2018ethical fashion\u2019 I was greeted with a list\u2026 of lists. Helpful. These lists were, mainly, magazine compilations and websites that can help guide you to eco-friendly clothing companies. Worryingly, I noticed the absences of\u00a0many of the big fashion names. Ethical seems to be a niche accessory to a fashion\u00a0brand, rather than a standardised\u00a0requirement.<\/p>\n
When you delve a little deeper, there are certain known brands that offer more ethical options. For example, H&M has a \u2018conscious\u2019 collection, which they release a couple of times a season. This collection is relatively affordable but still more expensive than the majority of the other items that H&M sell.<\/p>\n
Similarly, ASOS has the ASOS Africa collection, which is sold at a considerably higher price point than the rest of the ASOS own brand collection. I can only assume that this high price scares ASOS customers away, especially the increasingly poor students\u00a0who just so happen to be scrolling through the \u201cnew-in\u201d section.<\/p>\n
It could be argued that, to an extent, having a sustainable section in a global corporation just highlights that the rest of the collection isn\u2019t sustainable. If they can have an eco-friendly collection, why is the rest of the store not thus?<\/p>\n
Truthfully, I believe it is\u00a0because being eco-friendly doesn\u2019t increase business. It may attract a certain clientele, but the majority of people don\u2019t consider where their clothes come from, how much the workers get paid, or the effects that\u00a0these clothes have on the environment. Don\u2019t get me wrong, I\u2019m not saying the general public don\u2019t care, I\u2019m just saying it\u2019s not at the forefront of their minds.<\/p>\n
While brands like Stella McCartney may show great pride that none of their products harm animals, this also offers them a niche in the high-end market. Those beautiful chain trimmed bags are all faux-leather, yet because of the brand they can still charge thousands. And in the high-end market, creating that uniqueness has grown business.<\/p>\n
Even after a factory (allegedly a sweatshop) that supplied Primark collapsed in Bangladhesh\u00a0in 2013, we all still shop there. Perhaps we are too accustomed to the low prices of fast, high-end copies to consider the ethics of the clothes. But the existences of sustainable lines, like the H&M \u2018conscious\u2019 collection, prove that people do care. Every year more companies introduce new Earth-friendly collections and procedures, so fear not, the fashion industry does appear to be trying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sarah Kilcourse delves into the world of ethical fashion and investigates just how ethical our high-street really is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1511,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[2218,12400,3126,8654,1334,2592,3935],"coauthors":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15702"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1511"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15702\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15702"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=15702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}