100% Sweatshop Free Is Possible: It Starts with Small Steps

Imagine-Your-Favorite-Piece-of-Clothing

Consider the story of your favorite piece of clothing.

Maybe itโ€™s a dress you wore to your best friendโ€™s wedding or a t-shirt your favorite musician complimented when you met them at one of their shows. Maybe itโ€™s a pair of pants you feel most like โ€œyouโ€ when wearing, or a sweater you inherited from your grandpa.

Our clothing tells stories. Youโ€™ve probably looked back at an old picture of yourself and remembered the top you were wearing at the timeโ€ฆ where you got it, how you felt when you put it on.

We donโ€™t, however, always think about the person who began the storyโ€“the person who likely created the piece of clothing during one of their 12-hour work days, earning below minimum wage.

Most of us arenโ€™t aware of the long journey our clothing takes before it is folded and placed on shelves. We donโ€™t see the garments until theyโ€™re on display, so itโ€™s easy to imagine our shirts, pants, socks, and coats appear there by magic. Of course, retail employees fold them by hand, hang them on racks, and wiggle them onto mannequins, but how does our clothing get made in the first place?

All garments are made by human hands.

Unlike many factory-made items, clothing isnโ€™t created by machines. There are no assembly lines for sweatpants, no fully automated ways to bring a t-shirt into existence. While parts of the production process may be handled by machines, no clothing can be made without a person there to guide the stitches.

In other words, all garments are made by human hands.

It takes time and effort to create clothing. This is easy to forget when fashion is mass-produced and easily available. Clothing has gotten progressively cheaper over the years, making it even easier to dismiss the labor that goes into making a simple t-shirt. One pair of pants blends into the next, and the people who make them rarely cross our minds.

But people do make them, and those people are statistically likely to be underprivileged women of color who arenโ€™t paid nearly enough for their efforts.

This injustice occurs in developing nations, yes, but it also happens right here, in the United States. An investigation into thirteen major retailers in Los Angeles (including TJ Maxx, Fashion Nova, and Urban Outfitters, among others) found wage violations in 85% of their factories, uncovering sweatshops who paid their workers as little as $5 per hour, violating basic labor laws.

Clothes-are-Made-by-Human-Hands

The fashion industry is notorious for underpaying, overworking, and exploiting workers.

The percentage of fashion workers who earn a living wage is staggeringly low, at an estimated 2%. This issue has only grown since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with many brands drastically cutting prices paid to factories. The result? Increased food insecurity and unfair dismissal of unionised workers.

Different from the minimum wage, a living wage allows a person to comfortably afford basic necessities. Itโ€™s determined by local prices for housing and utilities, transportation, food and water, healthcare, childcare, and educationโ€“essentials many garment workers struggle to afford.

How can this be, when fast fashion is a multi-trillion dollar industry? After all, Amancio Ortega, co-founder of Zara, is one of the wealthiest men in the world. Jin Sook and Do Won Chang, co-founders of Forever 21, are billionaires. With money like this, one would think theyโ€™d have no trouble paying their factory workers.

Still, they get away with it. Daily.

Fast Fashion is everywhere.

These brands sell their clothing at incredibly cheap prices, made possible by producing low-quality goods and severely underpaying their workers. These low prices are attractive to consumers, especially in a time when trends turn over more quickly than ever before. If your $8 t-shirt is out of style next month, no worries. You can just buy another one at little cost to you, right?

The cost is much bigger for those who made the t-shirt.

What can you do about it?

As a consumer, you have the power to shift the narrative. 

Choosing to financially support brands who are 100% sweatshop free enables them to continue ethical business practices. Simultaneously, you withdraw financial support from unethical brands, creating a demand for them to produce their clothing more sustainably.

We wonโ€™t deny shopping for socially sustainable clothing is often more expensive than buying fast fashion. For many people, the most difficult part of changing their shopping habits is a shift in mindset. Itโ€™s incredibly normalโ€“expected evenโ€“for the average person to purchase some of the cheapest clothing on the market. Itโ€™s hard to adjust your expectations to what an article of clothing should costโ€ฆ but peace of mind comes with knowing the people who made those clothes were paid what they deserve.

If you evaluate your buying habits, you might notice you shop quite a lot already. Itโ€™s likely these habits need to change, which means your focus should shift to purchasing less items and shopping less often. Of course, this isnโ€™t an all-or-nothing approach! Shopping sustainably still allows you to incorporate several new clothing items each season, so you can continue to feel excited about what you wear. (Thankfully, ethically-produced clothing tends to be higher quality and longer lasting, so you can get away with holding onto it for much longer than a cheaply produced sweatshirt from a fast fashion brand). Thrifting is a great option to source a portion of your wardrobe if some ethically-produced clothing is outside of your budget, and apps like Depop and Poshmark make it even easier to find secondhand clothing you like.

As more consumers begin to care about how their clothes are made, change will happen. More people will be paid fairly for their labor. Sweatshopsโ€“and the abundance of harm that comes from themโ€“will eventually cease to exist.

Piles of Clothing

Motivational speaker Denis Waitley once said:

โ€œThere are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.โ€

Change starts with you

How do you know youโ€™re supporting living wages?

Brands who pay their workers living wages are usually upfront about it.

ABLE and Nisolo started the lowest wage challenge, which asks brands to make public their lowest wages. A brandโ€™s transparency doesnโ€™t guarantee theyโ€™re paying all workers living wages, but itโ€™s a step in the right direction and demonstrates a commitment to change. Publishing the lowest wage protects the most vulnerable workersโ€“itโ€™s much different than transparency surrounding the average wage.

Some brands, like Known Supply and Adelante Made-to-Order, even take it a step further by spotlighting the people who make their garments, giving visibility to the humans behind their clothes.

At Eco-Stylist, we recognize digging through the website of every clothing brand you like is tedious work and has the potential to be overwhelmingโ€ฆ so weโ€™ve done much of the work for you.

How can Eco-Stylist help?

We partner with brands held to high standards of Transparency, Fair Labor, and Sustainably Made, and theyโ€™re all listed on our website, making it easy for you to shop by your values. With little effort on your part, you can view which areas our brands excel in and where they have room for improvement. 

While the brands we partner with arenโ€™t perfect, theyโ€™re all committed to making positive change in our physical and social environments. Check out our shop page to find over 1,500 curated items from ethical brands that have made progress in providing living wages to their workers.

We recognize the shift toward sustainability is a continuous work-in-progress, and weโ€™re committed to holding our partnered brands accountable to increasingly ethical practice.

Let's Write a New Story for Fashion

Together, we believe we can write a new story for our clothing.

Together, we can create a world where garment workers are paid fairly and not overworked.

Together, we can ensure the story of your t-shirt is a good oneโ€“from start to finish.

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