What Sustainable Fashion Means To NYC
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Mike C.
By Megan Valle / @megavalle
After a long day of teaching at a fashion school in New York City, Jessica Kerley-Tanski goes back to her New Jersey home and gets started on her second job – selling clothes from her closet that she bought secondhand.
Kerley-Tanski has a social, e-commerce marketplace on Poshmark where she sells her reused clothes and accessories to over 170,000 of her customers. Her items range from as low as $4 for a Michael Kors jacket to $300 for a Dior bag.
Kerley-Tanski, a professor at LIM College, opened her Poshmark account to share her style and love for secondhand clothes with more people. She started posting on Instagram and YouTube to broaden her online presence and “learn about branding and influencers,” she said. This is when she realized there’s another reason people shop secondhand.
There’s a reduce-reuse-recycle movement in shopping to lessen the environmental impact of the clothing industry. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, only 2.3 million tons of used clothing and household textiles are recovered for reuse and recycling annually in the U.S., while more than 15 million tons are sent to landfills and incinerators.
“Through the process of that, I started hearing a little bit about dependable fashion and ethical fashion, and then I just kind of dove into that head first,”
she said.
From Teacher To Advocate
Now, Kerley-Tanski is a sustainable fashion advocate who believes the secondhand market is a way to make clothing and fashion both environmentally friendly and affordable. She sees herself as the antithesis to sustainable-fashion-for-the-rich, as seen in celebrity advocates like Gwyneth Paltrow and Meghan Markle, who show off selling and wearing high-priced sustainable brands.
Kerley-Tanski said that people who want to dress sustainably have “so many” options, other than buying new and spending a lot of money.
“I think clothing swaps can be really good, shopping your own closet, repairing clothes that maybe aren't great, or bringing something to a tailor and making it into something different like upcycling,” she said. Kerley-Tanski is part of a growing movement of people who believe fashion should be dependable.
Sustainablility In Demand
Sustainable fashion is on the rise. According to Forbes, the fashion search engine Lyst tracked more than 100 million searches on their shopping site in 2018 that showed a 47 percent increase in shoppers looking for sustainable items with terms such as “vegan leather” and “organic cotton.”
Despite the overwhelming demand, among mass-market apparel brands, only 1 percent of new products introduced in the first half of 2019 were tagged sustainable according to the McKinsey study “Fashion’s New Must-Have: Sustainable Sourcing at Scale.”
Kerley-Tanski hopes to influence these shoppers by encouraging sustainable fashion in what re-sellers call a “circular economy.” This is how she defines the term:
“Keeping things from getting into the landfill and really finding new owners and finding pieces that could have a very long life,” she said. Kerley-Tanski takes the “reduce” and “reuse” aspects of sustainable fashion seriously by arguing that clothes can and should be repurposed as a way to reduce the need to buy new clothes.
This defies the fashion industry’s marketing tactics that encourage shoppers to constantly purchase new clothes. According to The True Cost, a 2015 fashion documentary, people around the world consume more than 80 billion items of clothing each year.
Defining Sustainability
The fashion industry defines sustainable fashion as sourcing, manufacturing, and designing clothes that increase the benefits to the industry and society while decreasing negative impacts on the environment. The movement has become so lucrative that celebrities have bought into the idea.
Meghan Markle often wears dresses made by sustainable brands like Reformation, Stella McCartney, and Theory while Gwyneth Paltrow started a sustainable line of her own called G. Label, an extension of her wellness and lifestyle brand Goop.
Some of the top labels for sustainable retail brands include Reformation, Patagonia, and Amour Vert. But their prices make clear that they’re selling primarily to the wealthy. A simple, little black dress from Reformation is $128; an organic cotton pullover sweater from Patagonia is $149; a pair of blue skinny jeans from Amour Vert is $158.
While consumers are becoming increasingly aware and concerned about how their clothes are made, the cost is just too high for many. A 2019 survey of 2,000 U.S. and U.K. shoppers showed that while 52 percent of consumers want the fashion industry to follow more sustainable practices, only 29 percent would pay extra for sustainably-made clothes.
Sustainable fashion is a 20th-century concept. It’s a reaction to the industry term fast fashion, inexpensive clothes mass-produced at rates fast enough to keep up with high demand. The clothes are made in overseas factories in places like Bangladesh, where labor laws allow for low wages, discrimination, and child labor.
The Cost Of Sustainable Fashion
Garment workers in Bangladesh earn 3,000 takas, about $35 U.S. dollars a month, and work 14-16 hours a day, seven days a week. H&M, Gap, and Zara are a few companies that have suppliers in Bangladesh. This allows them to spend the least amount of money on production and worker compensation.
“Fast fashion has only been around for about 30 years,” Kerley-Tanski said. “Before that, especially for people with a low income, we always shopped sustainably. Repairing clothes, swapping clothes, hand-me-downs were how people had clothes. And buying good quality things, buying fewer things that would last a really long time.”
The clothing industry has been around for thousands of years. In Ancient Rome, garments were produced in workshops of up to 100 workers to outfit the military. By the Middle Ages, “ready-to-wear” clothes were made by the poor for “middle class” workers. Back then, “Ready-to-wear” meant roughly woven natural fibers made into clothing for the general marketplace or sold in stores, rather than being custom made for wealthy individuals.
By the 16th century, an export, import market for basic clothing items emerged. Still, the rich had their clothes handmade with finely woven wool, cotton, and silk. That changed dramatically during the Industrial Revolution with the invention of stronger threads and the machine power loom.
Factory workers produced overcoats, shirts, gloves, trousers, and footwear. During this era, the growing middle class could afford more clothes, driving up demand and production. This lead to an added need for factory workers in the United States and Europe, most of whom earned around $8 a month and worked up to 18 hours a day.
Dangerous workshops and low pay were brought to the forefront in 1911, when the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City went up in flames, killing 146 people. Still, conditions were unchanged until the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 gave U.S. unions rights.
The Demands Of Fashion
By the late 1980s the demand for clothing increased, fast fashion became the new norm, and companies started using cheaper fabrics spun from petroleum-based synthetics. This increased use in synthetics has led to the clothing industry’s contribution to environmental problems.
Apparel factories in the Middle East and Asia now produce 20 percent more clothes than they can sell. The leftovers are buried, incinerated, or shredded. The Environmental Protection Agency reported in 2015 that Americans throw out 10.5 million tons of textiles, most of which contain petroleum-based synthetics. that are non-biodegradable polyester, spandex, and nylon. These fabrics can take between 20 to 200 years to fully biodegrade.
Environmental activists were the first to highlight the issues in the fashion industry. Consumers took notice and created a demand for sustainable clothing, which many labels have capitalized on. Patagonia, Stella McCartney, and Eileen Fisher are just a few brands that have responded to the environmental impacts of the fashion industry by producing clothes made from organic and recycled fabrics. Patagonia and Eileen Fisher also sell their secondhand items in-store and online.
Sustainable fashion advocate and journalist Bel Jacobs says the movement finally gained momentum on April 24th, 2013 when the Rana Plaza, a Dhaka garment factory, collapsed killing over 1,000 people. The tragedy sparked worldwide concern about the state of the fashion industry. In 2015, the documentary, The True Cost emerged expanding on the huge social and environmental issues within the fashion industry.
“That was a turning point for me – I left my job as a fashion editor soon after – and for many people in the industry,” Jacobs said. “Social media made the images from the disaster very immediate, very real.” She said the documentary unearthed human and environmental rights on “unbelievable scales.”
Fame And Fashion
Celebrity awareness has also increased. Joaquin Phoenix wore the same tuxedo to five different award shows this year and Meghan Markle wore sustainable fashion brands during a royal tour of southern Africa in 2019. Jacobs is particularly concerned with Gwyneth Paltrow’s sustainable brand, G. Label.
Jacobs scanned the G. Label website and found that some of the clothes used non-organic cotton and synthetics, specifically polyester, which she called the “worst synthetic for shedding microfibers into the ocean.” According to Forbes, nearly 70 million barrels of oil are used each year to make polyester fiber, the most commonly used fiber in our clothing.
“I actually find this quite shocking,” Jacobs said. “On one page, Goop appears to be about living in harmony with the planet; on the other, it actively assists in destroying it. Plus, I think she’s peddling a lot of untested ideas to impressionable people who aspire to her looks and her lifestyle and charging a lot for it.”
Paltrow’s public image and her attempt to align her products with sustainable fashion have been called out for being problematic by the mainstream media. The Outline article, “The Unbearable Wrongness of Gwyneth Paltrow,” called Goop “pure, unadulterated, blood-diamond free, organic-certified, biodynamic, moon-dusted bullshit,” while an article “I Gooped Myself,” by The Atlantic said, “Goop, with its $3,000 dresses and $95 drinkable skincare, is the company you get when people believe that having nice things and being a good person are achieved through the same means.”
Paltrow has hit back at her critics. In an interview with Bloomberg, she defended her brand saying, “We aren’t a super-luxury site but we’re aspirational. We have things on there that cost $4. We have things on there that cost $500. Sometimes I think that some of the criticism Goop gets is because people haven’t actually gone to the site and looked around and seen what we actually are.” One of Goop’s $4 items is Hurraw Coconut Lip Balm.
Setting Sustainability Goals
The desire to live a sustainable lifestyle has led many consumers to turn to more cost-efficient ways to dress sustainably. Kerley-Tanski has even started to use her platform as a professor to educate her students on sustainable fashion. She encourages her students to do extensive research on the topic for their semester term paper.
“I teach it now more than ever,” she said.
“I feel like especially for fashion students, that’s something they need to know about.”
Andrea Reyes, Chairman of the New York City Fair Trade Coalition, says education is the biggest way to make an impact in the sustainable fashion community.
“We have people who are passionate about animal rights, we have members who will use only local productions and the most sustainable fibers, and then we have ones who are using upcycling or recycled materials,” she said. “We’re trying to figure out how to connect them with an audience that they can teach and help grow the movement.”
Reyes said that the New York City Fair Trade Coalition’s main goal is to educate people on their options. It’s then up to the consumer to decide how they want to spend their money.
“Maybe they’ll go to Everlane [a sustainable retail brand] or maybe they’ll realize oh wait, I just need to buy secondhand,” she said.
Secondhand, Thrifting, And Vintage Fashion
Secondhand shopping, or thrifting, is a popular way to shop sustainably. It’s easy and inexpensive, especially in New York. Sammy Davis, a self-proclaimed thrifting expert, leads thrift tours in Manhattan twice a month. She takes groups to her favorite thrift stores, helps them shop through countless clothing racks, and encourages them to look for unique pieces.
“I’m finding things for people and opening them up to what’s there in a way that they wouldn’t have seen on their own,”
she said.
At the same time, Davis sees thrift stores as an opportunity for people to overbuy because of the cheap prices. She encourages people on her tours to think about how they’d wear something before they buy it.
“I say on a scale of 1 to 10 how do you feel about this piece,” she said. “Can you wear this in the next week? If they can’t wear it in the next week, I’m like, well really think through this because you might never wear this.”
New York City is home to dozens of thrift stores. Salvation Army and Goodwill are traditional donation shops, where people can bring their unwanted items to be resold. But, there are also stores like Buffalo Exchange that give you either cash or store credit for your clothes. Davis believes this gives people even more incentive to shop secondhand, while simultaneously participating in a circular economy.
“You sell your clothes, you get credit, you use that credit to buy new clothes, so you’re never outputting new cash,” she said. “Your cash stays with you.”
Davis says while it’s ideal to shop circular, people usually prefer to buy new bras, underwear, and socks. She says if you want to buy something new, to do so from a smaller brand.
Circularity Clarity
Melanie Gonzalez is the owner of Simple Good in Port Jefferson, Long Island’s only zero waste shop. She says the items in her store are all reusable and designed to stay out of landfills and the ocean. She sells everything from $4 bamboo toothbrushes to $45 sustainable sweatpants. An important goal for Gonzalez is to prove that sustainability can and should be affordable.
“I thought that if I was really going to make a difference in the space, I had to make it so that more people could afford it,”
she said.
Gonzalez is also passionate about educating people on sustainability. She hosts monthly workshops at her store to teach people how to upcycle clothes, makes their own cleaning products, and learn how to tell a product is truly zero waste.
“A lot of people, they are just starting to understand the depth of the environmental issues that are out there, but they don't understand how to make a difference,” she said.
“So, it's about making connections with people who really want to make a change and then they go and they tell their friends and then they tell their friends.”
Andrea Reyes says making connections in the sustainable fashion community is how people can educate and learn about how easy it is to participate in the movement. She says the goal is to reach as many people as possible.
“Your decision to enlist the help of other people has a significant impact, your decision to join an organization and a group and having that coalition of people that are going to work together, that has greater power,” she said. “But you have to start with yourself.”
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