Why is sustainable fashion so expensive?

Sustainable fashion is often branded ‘too expensive’ so here is a little break down as to why we have this preconception and to help us understand that actually fast fashion is ‘too cheap’.

1. Most fast fashion brands are built on underpaying their workers

Only 2% or garment workers are paid above the living wage and most earn 21$ per month. This shows us that most clothing we buy is cheap because someone has not been paid a fair wage to make it. A garment worker typically earns 1-3% of the retail price of an item of clothing; if the top costs £8 they will earn 24p (fact from Labour Behind the Label). Sustainable and ethical fashion brans who are committed to paying their garment workers a living wage will always appear to be ‘expensive’ when in reality they are actually a ‘fair’ price as the workers have not been exploited.

2. Small production runs

Each year, fast fashion brands burn or throw away vast amounts of unsold clothing. This is because they mass produce the clothing to achieve a low price per unit. Sustainable fashion brands will do much smaller production runs which means the cost per unit to be produced is much higher but high levels of dead-stock clothing that is such a waste of materials.

3. Carefully sourced materials

Sustainable fashion brands spend a great deal of time and resources sourcing fabrics that are of higher quality and better for the environment. For example, Junk Ldn creates her swimwear from Econyl or Repreve which are recycled yarns made from old fishing nets and plastic bottles. With my fashion brand, each item is remade from 2nd items meaning the original item needs to be unpicked and each panel cut out separately which is far more time consuming that cutting multiple layers at once!

4. Mass production destroyed the way we value materials

One big thing fast fashion has done is break our connection to materials. We need to become more ‘materialistic’ and care about the materials that have been used to produce our clothing. Mass production has created a disconnection with how valuable the resources are. For example, cotton is a crop that is picked by hand so each tshirt you have was spun from a plant that was hand picked. What if the price of sustainable clothing was the correct and fair price but its our perceived value of clothing that has become distorted and destroyed from the mass production of clothing?

5. Its designed to last

Sustainable fashion brand are less trend led and the items are not designed to be disposable (*cough like some fast fashion brands that sell clothes for 8p on Black Friday sales). The clothing costs more as more time and care has been put in to producing an item of clothing that is designed to build your personal style rather than a passing trend. The fit of an item is assessed and the product will go through more development than a fast fashion item which is being rushed to production to keep up with the latest influencers IG post.

So while sustainable fashion may seem more expensive, it is basing the price of clothing on an exploitative and broken system. One that does not pay the women who made the clothes properly and mass produces without any care for the detrimental effect on the planet.