Today, in anticipation of Earth Month, Madewell has announced four new sustainable initiatives, each of which will help to solidify its role as one of the industry’s most forward-thinking denim brands.
Ever since Madewell launched its Eco Collection two years ago, a six-piece line-up of conscious denim, the New York-based brand has been improving its sustainability efforts across the board. The brand has partnered with Fair Trade Certified™, a non-profit organization that holds fashion companies to strict ethical and sustainable standards, and Saitex, a Vietnam-based producer of sustainable denim. Saitex is known for its efforts to reduce the use of water, chemicals, and energy in the denim production process.
Also in that time, Madewell launched the Do Well Shop, a microsite dedicated to the brand’s most sustainable merchandise. There, consumers can shop guilt-free pieces, from dresses to knitwear to, of course, denim, as well as find specific information about the brand’s sustainable initiatives.
Today, Madewell announced that by 2025, 100% of the fibers used in the fabrication of its products will be sustainably sourced and free of virgin plastics. To make that possible, the brand will instead increase its usage of sustainable cotton, synthetics, cellulosics, wool, and leather. For reference, the current spring collection is roughly 60% sustainable.
The brand also announced that it will continue its partnership with Fair Trade USA by making at least 90% of all its denim Fair Trade Certified by 2025. By the same due date, 100% of packaging materials will be both sustainably sourced and free of virgin plastics.
By 2030, all Madewell operations will be carbon neutral.
To kick-start these new commitments, Madewell also added a ton of new spring styles via the Do Well Shop, including a must-have tie-dye denim jacket, as well as spring-weather-ready cardigans, jumpsuits, and dresses. Show your support for the brand’s new initiatives by shopping our favorites from the drop below.
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Lily Fulop is the author of Wear, Repair, Repurpose: A Maker’s Guide to Mending and Upcycling Clothes, available now from publisherW.W. Norton.Fulop also runs the Instagram account@mindful_mending, where she shares sustainable fashion inspiration.
If you’re one of the many of us practicing social distancing, you might be finding yourself oscillating between stress (panic, dread, anxiety, etc.) and extreme boredom. A global crisis is happening; our routines have been flipped upside down, and we’re being told to do nothing. By doing nothing and staying inside, we’re saving lives — but that doesn’t mean it feels great, especially if we already struggle with mental health (raised hand emoji). Personally, it’s important for me to practice mindfulness and keep my hands busy at times of unease. So, I mend.
Mending is a way of repairing clothes that have holes, stains, or other signs of wear to make them more useful and beautiful. It’s about using what you have, embracing imperfections, fixing what’s broken, and rejecting the idea that newer is better. Most mending involves sewing, which means keeping your hands occupied with repetitive, soothing stitches. You get to focus on the task in front of you, and harness your creativity to make your clothes one-of-a-kind. Think: a colorful patch on top of a rip in your jeans, or an embroidered design on top of a coffee stain. It’s meditative, slow work. It’s productive, and deeply satisfying. And an added bonus: It’s sustainable.
A post shared by Lily Fulop (@mindful_mending) on Oct 14, 2019 at 6:49pm PDT
If you don’t know how to sew, but are interested in mending, let me just remind you that right now is the perfect time to learn a new skill — especially one that can have a positive impact on the world (that is, if you have time and energy left over after meeting your basic needs and caring for your family, which is, of course, a privilege). Staying creatively occupied can help with anxiety, but mending in particular can help with the modern phenomenon that is eco-anxiety because it’s a concrete way of taking action against the unsustainable practices of the fashion industry.
The rise of fast fashion (fueled by the rise of consumerism) has given way to massive amounts of pollution and waste. Clothes are made quickly and cheaply to keep up with ever-changing trends and consumer demand, as well as to give people access to trends that they might not otherwise be able to afford. But the products aren’t made to last. This allows some people to be less intentional about their purchases, because the stakes seem low — queue someone buying a dress for a single night out and never wearing it again.
All these cheap clothes end up somewhere after they’ve been discarded, and that somewhere is most often a landfill. Considering the fact that most clothes are now composed of some amount of synthetic fibers (aka plastic), your outfit isn’t so different from the dreaded plastic straw. According to environmental organization Fashion Revolution, decomposing clothing releases methane (a harmful greenhouse gas), and synthetic fabrics can take hundreds of years to fully decompose. But when you take care of your clothes and mend them, you can keep them out of the landfill for longer, and reduce the amount of clothes you go through over time.
Mending is an act of resistance; a rejection of the kind of capitalism that puts profit before the planet. Mending is activism (#craftivism). It sends a message that we care about reducing waste and minimizing our environmental impact, that we don’t need to buy into trends or buy anything at all, really. We care enough to invest our time into fixing what we have, and to embed something deeply personal into it: our own handiwork.
The other aspect of mending is mindfulness. When you take the time to learn how to sew and repair your own clothes, you’re forced to slow down and are able to reflect on the task at hand, or perhaps on other aspects of your lives that need mending, like relationships or habits that don’t serve you. But a lot of people also have this jolting realization while working with their clothes that someone actually made these. A person’s hands in Sri Lanka or Bangladesh or any number of countries touched every single part of our clothes. They cut the pattern pieces and ran them under machines. Before that, other hands dyed the fabric and processed the fibers. These hands belong to people who often don’t make a living wage, and who work in dangerous conditions just so we can get our clothes cheap.
When you start to become aware of the life cycle of clothing, it changes the way you think about consuming. Suddenly, it’s not a cute new top from your favorite brand. It’s an object composed of labor, raw materials, and toxic chemicals that was shipped from the other side of the world to be worn a few times and ultimately be discarded. It’s not really worth it anymore. Being aware of the ugly side of manufacturing helps us differentiate between what we want and what we need. It helps us be intentional with the items that we buy and bring into our lives. It starts to feel really good when you curate your closet (and the rest of your life) to be composed of meaningful pieces that you feel good about wearing, and you care enough about to repair.
With so much normalcy being disrupted already, it may hardly seem like the time to transform the way you think about your wardrobe. But this global pause may be an opportunity to reorient our practices to be better for the planet, and our own mental health, because it brings with it a sense of clarity. Take for instance the fact that during the mandated lockdown in China, factory closures caused air pollution levels to drastically drop. When daily life screeches (inconveniently and tragically) to a halt, we’re able to clearly see the human impact we have on the world. And, without the usual distraction of daily life, and the added stress of these new circumstances, it can become really clear what’s important to us (a daily walk, conversations with loved ones, creative outlets…).
A post shared by Lily Fulop (@mindful_mending) on Jan 13, 2020 at 8:18am PST
It makes sense if clothes aren’t really at the top of your mind. Right now we can’t go shopping IRL, and many of us have much tighter budgets due to a lack of job security. (Besides, a lot of us are self-isolating in the same pair of sweatpants everyday, right?) But what this means is that many of us have already started a slow-fashion habit, without realizing it! So, when normal life resumes, maybe we can keep it up. Because when we buy fewer clothes, we’re reducing the amount of pollution caused by the textile industry. We’re freeing up space in our closets (and minds) to focus on what is important. When we mend, we’re taking action to heal a broken system.
There are a lot of things in the world that need fixing and a lot of them are beyond our immediate control, which can feel disheartening at best, and panic-inducing at worst. But starting where we are, with what we have and what we can do, helps us feel less powerless. Because we’re doing something, no matter how small. Remember, when you add up a lot of small changes, they add up to big change. So instead of online shopping, try mending a hole in your clothes, and see how good it feels.
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By now, those of us working from home have already baked bread, done so many online yoga classes we are basically experts, and learned every dance that’s been invented thus far on TikTok. Next up: Marie Kondo’ing our closets. Or rather, that’s what fashion’s finest, including Kate Moss, Carine Roitfeld, and Thandie Newton, have taken to doing over the last few weeks, as per the request of luxury resale company Vestiaire Collective. The stuff they’re getting rid of will be auctioned off to the highest bidder, with every single penny of the proceeds going to the organizations who need funding most right now.
As for the proceeds from the online auction, Vestiaire Collective will be donating to charitable organizations both in the company’s home country of France and worldwide, with each celebrity contributor choosing a specific charity to support that is close to their hearts. Of those chosen, there’s the World Health Organization (WHO), a UN-led organization that specializes in global health; Fondation Hôpitaux de France-Paris, a charity designed to help improve the quality of life for children, young people, and the elderly in French hospitals; Lombardy Regional Fundraising, which will raise money for the Northern region of Italy where COVID-19 has hit especially hard; and La Paz University Hospital in Madrid, which is working hard to combat the effects of COVID-19 in the Spanish capital.
“In my 30-year career, I’ve never assisted in something like this before,” fashion journalist Anna Dello Russo says. “This pandemic has transformed us into a militant audience: in my small part, I feel I need to do everything I can to be helpful for the people involved in the fight against this virus.” Dello Russo chose for her donation to benefit the Lombardy region of Italy.
We know the act of shopping on its own might feel trivial right now, but when it comes to helping the organizations on the frontlines, every penny counts. Sign on to Vestiaire Collective’s website or shop the curated selection below to support the organization that feels most important to you today.
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