Is Eco Fashion Too Expensive?
Time and time again you hear it: “Eco-fashion is way too expensive!”
But is it?
Myths abound when it comes to sustainably designed clothing and accessories. Here’s what six designers had to say about it.
As consumers become more aware of the impact of certain industries on the environment, they want to make better choices, and I can honor that people think eco products are more expensive, but they need to consider a few things:
1) The cost of organic, eco, raw materials is more expensive, so designers are spending more money to make a product that is better for the environment, humans and animals. These materials are more expensive because these companies/industries are not subsidized by our government.
2) As consumers become more aware of the power they have to change old, harmful industries, and the demand for eco products goes up, there will be more companies making better products. With more demand, there is more supply; the cost of raw goods will go down and this will be reflected in the final cost to consumers with a lower price tag.
3) Eco goods are generally better quality and are not mass-produced in countries with inhumane labour practices.
4) Lastly, the green movement is not only about the impact of activities upon the environment, but also a change in priorities of wants and needs. Materialism and consumerism is the path we have been on and it just isn’t sustainable on a physical or emotional level. Less is more and eco -friendly is better for everyone.
More than anything, I do my best to explain (without being preachy) why eco-clothing appears to be more expensive than conventional clothing. The process of creating truly green fashion involves expenses you don’t find when producing conventional garments.
Eco-fabrics are more expensive, low-impact dyes are more expensive, and manufacturing locally in the USA (rather than overseas) is also more expensive. Because of these factors, in order for a garment to produce any sort of profit for the designer or company, the price point may be higher. In the end, though, you get what you pay for.
Eco-clothing is often very well made, and eco-fabrics also have much longer life spans than conventional fabrics, so you aren’t purchasing disposable clothing. One of my biggest goals in design is to create pieces that are stylish, but also timeless – wardrobe staples that you’ll have in your closet for many years. In the long run, spending a little more for a few beautiful, key pieces that will last truly does save you money over continuously buying cheap pieces.
We also work very hard on our price points in an effort to keep our them reasonable. It’s more important to us to make our clothing accessible and available to as many people as possible than to make a huge profit. We want people to appreciate fashion, but also to realize the necessity of preserving our earth.
Oami Powers, designer of Judah Ross
We all love to look beautiful, and for most of us, we are trying to figure out how to do that on a budget. When times are tight, the lure of that cute, fashion-forward top going for $20 at H&M or Target can be overwhelming.
It’s important to try to look at the big picture, though. If you think about it, the amount of labor and energy that goes into each conventional garment we buy is kind of staggering. The crop is planted, nurtured, harvested. Then the raw material goes to a factory where it is processed and spun in yarn. The yarn is usually then taken to another factory where it’s woven into fabric, sent to a dye mill where it is dyed and possibly finished.
It’s sold to a manufacturer who must design, draft and grade patterns, create samples to test for fit & performance, cut and sew the garments, market, finish pack and ship. At each stage there are ordinary people who need to be paid for their labor, and the cost of raw materials.
The eco/sustainable movement is growing, but it is still very new and is a small part of the industry worldwide. Often, the raw material themselves are more expensive. It is a significant investment of time and money for a cotton grower to transition from a conventional to an organic crop. Raising sheep on organic pasture is more expensive than feeding them the non-organic option.
Processing the raw materials in a responsible manner often means that the mills and dye houses will need to alter existing machinery or buy new machinery, and add new waste treatment facilities. In order for worker conditions to improve all along the supply chain, factory’s cost of doing business will increase.
Because the demand for eco clothing is still a small proportion of the industry as a whole, they are often being made by smaller producers or they are a small part of a larger company’s production. Though it may cost us more to buy a hemp/silk dress than one made of conventional cotton, I think we can take some pride that a little portion of each of those dollars is paying a factory worker a better wage, or helping a factory treat the waste from their factory.
If eco-clothing is expensive, just think of all the wasteland and oceanic deadzones that were created so we can have cheap and plentiful clothing. That is something no money can bring back.
Cost is a subjective thing. We don’t think twice about spending $200 on a pair of Nike sneakers, where the actual cost was $4.50, advertising cost $30 and profit margin 300%+. Yet a pair of shoes that costs the same, well made with honestly sustainable materials by an unknown designer, may be considered costly. Do we ever wonder why?
Perhaps if we each are more conscientious about our purchasing choices, even if it’s just one garment at a time, we can bring up demand, reduce cost and have the best of both worlds.
Eco clothing absolutely costs more to manufacture than conventional clothing. The raw materials cost more. There’s only a limited supply of organic cotton. Extra processing to avoid nasty chemicals, waste and runoff all goes into the price of sustainable fabrics. Low-impact dyeing and printing costs more. Labor expenses are often higher for eco-clothing manufacturers, whether that means working with domestic contractors or with factories abroad who pay workers fair wages.
The profit margins are pretty slim in manufacturing and production volumes have to be high to negotiate pricing. It isn’t cost efficient yet to produce eco-clothing, but if more consumers choose to buy green we may see a wider range of price points in the near future. Buy eco now if you can, and it will benefit us all in the long run.
Eco-clothing isn’t always that expensive, relative to similar designer brands.
Even so, the price tags aren’t come up with arbitrarily…every step of the production process adds its own cost to the bottom line. For example, Cri de Coeur shoes are made in a socially responsible factory that pays fair wages. Materials are high quality, so not only do they look and feel good, they’ll endure through many years of wear. The shoes are made by hand, since the vegan materials don’t lend themselves to automated production processes that were developed for leather footwear.
It’s also important to keep in mind that the cost of a product isn’t solely what’s on the price tag. Everything has a carbon footprint that it impacts upon our planet. While buying the sustainable, organic or fair-trade product may be slightly more expensive in the short-term, it’s long term benefits are more than worth it.
Main image: Borman818
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Goodness.
Kathleen I wrote the article you’re commenting on and for the record am a fan of Fashion Incubator.
As a clothing rep, marketer and writer for eco-designers for the past 5 years, I am fully aware of the experienced and not so experienced, minimums and production based on properly cut patterns.
I’m completely in agreement there and am absolutely not lambasting anyone!
I just think the younger designers just coming into the eco-design world need help with finding sustainable fabrics from the right places.
I was just on the phone with Pickering Natural last night and who I will be interviewing for next week’s post and learned a lot more than what I thought I did regarding fabric, sourcing and minimums.
Thanks for all your great feedback on this topic.
I emphatically disagree that selfishness and secrecy is the biggest problem. If you go over to my site, there’s over 1,600 entries on how to start a clothing line. Some of the material is dense, it requires thinking and applying it. Not everyone wants to do that, but the keys are all there. They want the cut to the chase version tell me what I want to know, tell me what I want to know, tell me what I want to know. They don’t want to do any heavy lifting.
The real problem is this: because they don’t want to do the heavy lifting and try to get someone who has information to help them, the second person isn’t going to do it. The reason is that referrals are considered an endorsement in this business. The person who gives you a referral is lending you their influence. If you’ve already proven you’re not willing to follow previous advice they’ve given you, they’re not going to give you anymore. Here’s an entry called How to find help in the apparel industry for almost nothing that explains this.
The point is, people who know stuff want to hang out with people on their same level, who can help them with their problems. It’s not that it’s a secret but if you want it, you have to join them. The door’s open. It’s not that they’re selfish. I could spend all day long answering these questions on the web for free but then I’d be out of business.
Amyd: If you’re going to write an article about designers potentially pooling their resources, you really should read something about minimums. It’s not what people think. Sure, it’s easy to look at it one-sided and lambaste the powers that be but if you want a workable solution, a meeting in the middle, you must understand the constraints of their operations. The TRUTH is that contractors have minimums because small designers are too inexperienced to practices and protocols in the trade and it costs much more to service them. As a service provider myself (yes, I’m one of these people being blamed), you don’t know how often I get patterns that can’t possibly be sewn in production, none of the pieces match, they don’t include a basic checklist like a cutter’s must. They don’t indicate specs, packages come incomplete, they don’t have markers, and they have no idea what something basic like a cut order is or how to do one.
Hi John. I agree and I’m hoping to be a part of changing that soon.
I have many eco-designers ask me about fabric sourcing and dyeing (where other designers go) and I see it as a positive thing to share so that their costs will go down when the demand is greater at one place.
You can understand why designer’s do it but it’s really not necessary.
Stay tuned for a post I’m writing next week that touches this topic a bit.
Selfishness and keeping secrets seems to be one of the forte’s of this business. I don’t know how you change that
A really well researched and thought out article – thanks. I am loving secnd hand clothes and clothes swapping as the ultimate eco fashion, not only does it reduce landfill and the environmental impacts associated with manufacture of new clothes but it is also a lot cheaper than buying new clothes. Who says you can’t be green in a recession?
Wouldn’t it be nice if all the smaller designers banded together and manufactured in the same place in the U.S., thereby driving down their costs and the consumers?
Time to get these designers sharing resources and not being so secretive.
And believe me, being friends with many of them I preach this often.
Minor quibble:
But we need to get away from clothing that is … (b) sold in a way that lines the pockets of countless middlemen.
Apparel is unique among consumer products in that there are rarely middlemen involved in transactions, particularly among smaller producers. There are rarely wholesalers, the nature of trend driven products and short selling windows makes this untenable even if the margins were there. People just assume there are middlemen because this function is imbued in the sale of nearly all other consumer products. Nearly all apparel products are sold by manufacturers to retail stores or consumers directly sans middlemen. This is not to say manufacturers don’t have sales support as do all producers but sales people do not buy the products for subsequent resale to other parties, adding their own mark up on the transaction. Rather, sales people *take orders* for future delivery, a service for which they derive commissions.
Conversely, sewn products -such as dog collars for example- can be resold via middlemen because these items aren’t seasonally driven; product styling remains relatively static over a period of time.
Rather, the key to lowering costs in apparel production is better management (usually better product design and industrial engineering of processes) and to some extent, improving economies of scale. Small producers, being newer at the game, rarely have the acumen or resources to produce quality commensurate to the value represented by producers of other items of complimentary price points.
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Thanks for all these comments.
I come up with the bi-weekly question based on what I hear people asking.
Nobody ever asks why the designers in the “other” part of the fashion industry create expensive clothing but always with eco.
My guess is that it sticks out more which is fina as it’s all the more reason to let people know just what did go into it.
Many designers I write about are wonderful women who work hard to put out their seasonal collections, care about doing it all here in the U.S. and love the fact they’re doing what they love and with a small carbon footprint.
They pride themselves on creating real fashion forward designs with new, cutting edge fabrics.
So yes, posts like this help me put them on a pedestal to prove how great they are but also to get you the readers to shop them because when you invest in them, they can create another collection.
Hopefully, we’ll at some point be in a place where all we wear is eco-fashion and thanks to our demand for it, prices will go down for them to manufacture and for us to consume.
Terrific article, Amy.
I’m very much of the mind that our perception of “expensive” has been skewed by decades of mass-consumerism that has given us cheap products with a frankly pathetic use-life. Eco-fashion is a market of quality goods that do (or should) truly last. Quality is worth paying for. On top of that, the fact they’re produced with green principles in mind is another reason to pay “extra”.
But telling people that they should expect to pay more for their goods, in the middle of a recession – that’s a challenge.
But we need to get away from clothing that is (a) far too cheaply sold, and (b) sold in a way that lines the pockets of countless middlemen. Yet, how do we get that message across to someone eyeing up a $3 T-shirt at their local market? All these designers show one answer: total transparency. Find a way to describe to the consumer (in places like this site) exactly how things are made – what the true cost is.
(Shameless self-plug to an article I wrote that really woke me up to the true cost of some everyday things).
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Kathleen, thank you for your thoughtful response.
Amy, I love that you take the time to put together these posts sharing so many important voices in eco fashion. Thanks to all the designers who participate.
I’m quite pleased to see two of my designers on this list. I do *not* imply my efforts had anything to do with the successes they’ve striven so hard for but it does imply that the concepts of sustainable production are viable and word is increasingly becoming known.
One factor that can’t be minimized is how far we’ve come. These designers represent a sea change in design options. Eco apparel isn’t anything new; I’ve been crunchy granola for over 30 years but 30 years ago, sustainable dressing was nothing but homespun twigs and berries.
I would reiterate Alice’s (Feral Childe) words, economies of scale can be the biggest challenge at the outset.
I don’t want to get too off tangent here but it is critical that eco fashion attain a “tipping point”. Consumers have the *expectation* that the market is robust and diverse enough that most (if not everyone) should be able to buy what they want and like. Unfortunately, this is a fallacy. The latter is but a theoretical model useful to explain supply and demand in econ 101. Rather than to continue to bore anyone, read _The Tyranny of the Market: Why You Can’t Always Get What You Want _ if this topic interests you. It isn’t until eco fashion becomes more popular that better economies of scale and profitability are possible which encourages further diversity and consumer choice.
excellent article!
Thanks for all the info, Amy. I can tell you put alot of effort into your research. Knowledge is power.
Elly D.