Sustainable Menswear?

[Shirtmaven]

Who didn't love a necktie made from texurized polyester

 

[Shirtmaven]

manufacturing on demand will continue to grow in popularity, eliminating unnecessary inventory. Cutting down on waste

 

[ridgerider]

Oh for Gods sake! ******* sustainable?

Cotton is a crop. Sustainable.
Wool/cashmere? Sustainable.
Leather? From cows. Sustainable and given the recent fetish regarding cow farts and global warming, I’d say buy more leather.
Silk? Pretty sustainable last I checked.

I’d argue 90% of clothing is made up of these such things.

What’s not sustainable, the labor used in sweat shops and Chinese concentration and prison camps to produce this stuff.

Exactly.

 

[dwpenny]

Hi guys,

I am a very infrequent SF user but thought I’d throw my hat in the ring when I saw the topic of this thread.

I’m a professor at Parsons and frequently cover fashion sustainability for GQ and FT. There are no simple golden rules when it comes to sustainable fashion, as discussed in earlier posts. However, there are certainly materials to avoid (virgin polyester, conventional cotton, etc.), as well as places where labor and environmental regs are lax (China, Bangladesh). I spend a lot of time researching these issues and am rarely satisfied myself, but if you’re like me and interested in learning more about this topic, do look out for my byline.

The Terribly High Cost of Cheap Goods

Amelia Pang's book Made in China explores the rise of the forced labor camps that play a distressingly large role in the fashion industry.

www.gq.com

 

[Phileas Fogg]

White suburban kids who gladly wear a “**** 12” t-shirt don’t think twice about where that t-shirt was made.

The degree that our supply chain is so looped into China is truly disgusting. These are obviously geopolitical issues that go well beyond just clothing, but the slave labor used in China for manufacturing purposes is scandalous.

But how do we get around it? I run. I wear Nike. It’s a company I abhor for many reasons beyond just their reliance on Chinese manufacturing but they make a shoe that works for me. So I’m just as much a part of the problem as anyone else.

 

[Panama]

White suburban kids who gladly wear a “**** 12” t-shirt don’t think twice about where that t-shirt was made.

The degree that our supply chain is so looped into China is truly disgusting. These are obviously geopolitical issues that go well beyond just clothing, but the slave labor used in China for manufacturing purposes is scandalous.

But how do we get around it? I run. I wear Nike. It’s a company I abhor for many reasons beyond just their reliance on Chinese manufacturing but they make a shoe that works for me. So I’m just as much a part of the problem as anyone else.

Manufacturing is leaving China. It is now in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Bangladesh. I try and avoid any Bangladesh product as they circumvent any law regarding working conditions.

 

[Old_ School]

Manufacturing is leaving China. It is now in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Bangladesh. I try and avoid any Bangladesh product as they circumvent any law regarding working conditions.

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but I must note that there is substantive variance in the working conditions at garment manufacturers' facilities across southeast Asia; some outsourcers perform compliance checks and have by times sanctioned their suppliers. I do realize these folks are in the minority...

 

[Panama]

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but I must note that there is substantive variance in the working conditions at garment manufacturers' facilities across southeast Asia; some outsourcers perform compliance checks and have by times sanctioned their suppliers. I do realize these folks are in the minority...

There are usually five to ten major players in each segment - shirts, lingerie etc. I am sure in the shirts segment that TAL, Esquel, Verde, Lever, Smart/Sunrise, Lu Thai et al have good working conditions. It's the smaller players trying to compete that sub contract that are the issue. TAL and Esquel now have complete chains from the field to factory - apparently I read that on the internet...

 

[Keith Taylor]

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but I must note that there is substantive variance in the working conditions at garment manufacturers' facilities across southeast Asia; some outsourcers perform compliance checks and have by times sanctioned their suppliers. I do realize these folks are in the minority...

When it comes to garment manufacture for high street brands in SE Asia I’ve found it’s usually safe to assume, no matter what lofty claims a brand may make in its marketing, that somewhere along the way from the mill to the finished product someone is working an 18 hour shift without breaks in a building with a bricked up fire escape. I usually spend six months each year in Bangkok, and within just a few blocks of my apartment I know of at least half a dozen small shophouses converted into workshops where people churn out stacks of clothing for well known brands. The working conditions don’t seem scandalously bad (and the products may be knock offs in any case), but there’s no way these facilities would meet any kind of regulations a western brand would be proud to advertise.

The problem is that western brands don’t actually care about the working conditions of their overseas staff, and nor do most customers in any meaningful sense that would influence their shopping habits. As long as brands have plausible deniability and a veneer of concern for workers they’ll happily turn a blind eye to the subcontracting necessary to fulfil orders that their well built, modern factories and smiling, happy workers can’t meet.

 

[upsett1_spaghett1]

So I’m just as much a part of the problem as anyone else.

I'm using this website on an Apple computer so I feel this

 

[Shirtmaven]

Obviously my small shop of 6 employees producing less then 100 shirts a week. Has very small impact. but I do what I can.
Garments are produced to order.
I buy many fabrics that are leftover from larger companies. I have plenty of vintage/dead stock fabrics. Fabric I buy directly from mills all have GOTS certification
fabric too short for a shirt will be used for boxer shorts, pocket squares, shopping bags, and masks
Anything left then goes to Fabscrap. They then chop up this fabric into shoddy, which had many industrial uses.

 

[Lensmaster]

The OP simply asked for recommendations of brands that are attempting to support sustainability in their business. I don't have any answers for the question myself right now. I came to this thread to see the answers to that question. A few people made useful responses. Some people made comments on the general idea of what really is sustainability. That was interesting and useful. But, half the comments on here are infighting and arrogance. If someone says something rude about you or what you said ignore it. If you attack back, I don't mean defending an idea, rather just another personal attack, than you are being as guilty of derailing the discussion.

I will agree there is no reason to buy cheap cashmere. That is not an elitist opinion. I have never owned a cashmere piece. I don't have the money to spend on quality cashmere clothing. Cashmere got it's reputation from well made clothing. Cheap cashmere is sold simply because that name is in the material. there is plenty of other wool that makes quality material at that lower price point. It doesn't make one a populist to say everyone should be able to buy cashmere no matter how cheap the garment or the effects sourcing it has on the environment. I don't feel shame in acknowledging that quality cashmere makes for expensive garments and cheap cashmere can be replaced with better sourced types of wool, and I can afford the other wools.

 

[dwpenny]

Obviously my small shop of 6 employees producing less then 100 shirts a week. Has very small impact. but I do what I can.
Garments are produced to order.
I buy many fabrics that are leftover from larger companies. I have plenty of vintage/dead stock fabrics. Fabric I buy directly from mills all have GOTS certification
fabric too short for a shirt will be used for boxer shorts, pocket squares, shopping bags, and masks
Anything left then goes to Fabscrap. They then chop up this fabric into shoddy, which had many industrial uses.

Hi Carl,

Sounds like you're already many steps ahead of your competitors. The biggest step is that you're not wasting material by making things for off the rack. On top of that, using deadstock (always better than new) and FabScrap are also great ways to reduce Co2 impact. And GOTS is an excellent baseline for cotton, but to get more granular detail, the mills have to know/show more about their supply chains.

Hope you're staying safe in NYC and that your film/theatre business picks up again soon. We need more shops like yours.

Best,
D

 

[anonymouz]

Hi guys,

I am a very infrequent SF user but thought I’d throw my hat in the ring when I saw the topic of this thread.

I’m a professor at Parsons and frequently cover fashion sustainability for GQ and FT. There are no simple golden rules when it comes to sustainable fashion, as discussed in earlier posts. However, there are certainly materials to avoid (virgin polyester, conventional cotton, etc.), as well as places where labor and environmental regs are lax (China, Bangladesh). I spend a lot of time researching these issues and am rarely satisfied myself, but if you’re like me and interested in learning more about this topic, do look out for my byline.

The Terribly High Cost of Cheap Goods

Amelia Pang's book Made in China explores the rise of the forced labor camps that play a distressingly large role in the fashion industry.

www.gq.com

Thanks for sharing this.
I also recently read https://www.gq.com/story/outdoor-gear-pfas-study, which isn't CM related but still eye opening. And it turns out to be one of your articles too

 

[Keith Taylor]

Are you aware of the environmental impacts of over-farming? Mongolia has gone through a desertification process because of the overfarming of cashmere. Can go on for each of the crops and materials you listed.

Quick follow up on the subject of Mongolian desertification. This past Sunday the country was engulfed in a massive dust storm that killed about a dozen people, collapsed more than a hundred homes and left 1.6 million livestock either dead or lost to their herders, no doubt including lots of cashmere goats. These dust storms grow worse each spring.

This was the view from my apartment. Still shaking sand from my hair.