Your Guide to Sustainable Fashion Terms
We believe sustainability matters. It’s the very premise we’ve based our entire collection around, aiming to supply the world with high-quality, zero waste products that tend to your well-being as much as that of the planet.
So, we know a thing or two about sustainable fashion and all of its many confusing branches. To help you make sense of an ever-changing, ever-more eco-friendly fashion industry, while staying sustainable in style, we’ve covered the most common branches below, explaining exactly what they are in simple, bit-sized pieces – enjoy!
Sustainable Fashion Definitions
What is Eco Fashion?
At its most fundamental level, eco-fashion attempts to minimize the fashion industry’s impact on the world. While this definition is mainly taken to mean the environment, it also encompasses workers' and animal rights alongside general standards of living. Overall the principle of eco-fashion is to keep the industry moving in a more sustainable, cruelty-free, and fair direction for consumers, employees, animals, and the planet at large.
Environmentally-friendly brands that adhere to eco-fashion principles tend to have start-to-finish production and distribution lines that deviate from the more standard industry model.
To achieve its goal of a more sustainable and healthy industry for all, eco-fashion is also taking on the 92 million tons of textile waste produced by the fashion industry every year!
In the place of cheaper, non-biodegradable materials, they use eco-conscious clothing fabrics, including hemp, soy silk/cashmere, organic cotton, and linen, to make clothes that not only last longer but can also easily be repurposed.
What is Slow Fashion?
Slow fashion is the opposite of fast fashion. It invites consumers to think before buying while adopting a strategy of patience and curiosity when it comes to making style choices. The key to slow fashion is thoughtfulness, research, and, ultimately – awareness.
However, the task of slow fashion doesn’t solely rely on consumers. Brands must also dedicate to creating long-lasting, individual, high-quality garments that consumers can keep rather than throw out after a couple of wears.
In a nutshell: Instead of purchasing several items, slow fashion encourages buying less and investing in higher quality materials that last a long time.
What is Circular Fashion?
Circular fashion seeks to close the traditionally linear model of fashion. In other words, it aims to reduce its demand on the planet’s natural resources to zero by using textiles that are already in use. Circular fashion practices include responsible manufacturing, use, and end-of-life for every garment.
The key to circular fashion is building businesses that keep garments in use by reselling, clothing swaps, store take-back schemes, garment repair, and upcycling. They also dedicate to only using sustainable and safe materials while creating innovative and green solutions for turning old clothes into new clothes.
Circular fashion and the zero waste lifestyle tend to go hand in hand, with both aiming to minimize the number of resources they use.
What is Ethical Fashion?
Ethical fashion refers to garments that have been produced in an environment that is conscious and engaged in the many social issues the fashion industry affects.
Ethical fashion takes both environmental and socio-economic aspects into account. In practice, this implies continuous work to improve all stages of the product’s life cycle, from design, raw material production, manufacturing, transport, storage, marketing, and final sale, to use, reuse, repair, remake, and recycling of the product and its components.
The Bottom Line
As sustainable fashion gain ground, it inevitably becomes more complex and multi-varied. What we’re seeing are many new disciplines contained under the umbrella term of sustainable fashion that all deal with separate approaches to fashion, all with the aim of enacting positive, more eco-friendly change in the industry.
