Much like Christmas decorating, Black Friday shopping seems to start earlier and earlier each year. In fact, many Black Friday sales are already happening and last the whole month! But you might want to think twice about where you’re spending your hard-earned dollars.
Why? Well, second only to oil, the clothing and textile industry is the largest polluter in the world.
The industry emits about 10% of global carbon emissions—more than the emissions of all international flights and maritime shipping combined. According to Global Fashion Agenda, “If the fashion industry does not accelerate its response to climate change, it will by 2030 produce around twice the volume of emissions required to align with Paris Agreement global warming pathways.”
And it’s not just emissions. Nearly 20% of global wastewater is produced by the fashion industry. It takes about 20,000 liters of water to produce one kilogram of cotton, the equivalent of a single t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Cotton farming alone is responsible for 24% of insecticides and 11% of pesticides, despite using only 3% of the world’s arable land.
Fast fashion has made a huge impact on the quality and lifespan of an item of clothing too. The average person throws away 70 pounds of clothing per year, 95% of which could be recycled. It’s been linked to dangerous working conditions due to unsafe processes and hazardous substances used in production.
This year, we’re working on being more sustainable in our purchases and you should to. That’s why we’ve put together this list of of our favorite sustainable clothing brands you can shop, so you don’t have to feel quite so guilty for opening up your wallet.
United By Blue
- Product Range: Men’s and women’s clothing, accessories, and shoes
- Ethics: Sustainable clothing materials, ethical manufacturing, no single-use plastics in supply chain, B Corp status
- Pricing: $-$$
United By Blue makes it their mission to clean up the world’s waterways by removing one pound of trash from oceans for every product purchased. In addition to that, they aim to use materials that leave as little footprint as possible and are working to remove all single-use plastics from their supply chain. They partner with manufacturers that support ethical working conditions and use sustainably sourced materials for their products.
Everlane
- Product Range: Men’s and women’s apparel, accessories, and shoes
- Ethics: Ethical factories, quality materials, transparent pricing
- Pricing: $-$$
Everlane makes sure all of the factories they use provide fair wages, reasonable hours, and a healthy environment for their workers. Every year on Black Friday, they donate their profits to improve the lives of the people who work at their factories as part of their Black Friday Fund initiative. They source the finest materials for their products so that they are built to last, and are ‘radically transparent’ about their pricing.
ARTICLE22
- Product Range: Jewelry
- Ethics: Repurpose war scrap metal in Laos, donates to village development, social enterprise
- Pricing: $$
ARTICLE22’s jewelry is handmade from repurposed war scrap metal by local artisans in Laos. Each sale clears 3m2 of bomb littered land, and the brand works to provide risk education to the local population, keeping them safe from unexploded ordnance. They company also donates 10% of each sale to the Village Development Fund to benefit the entire community, from electricity in communal areas to micro-financing livestock investments.
Boden
- Product Range: Men’s, women’s, children’s, and baby apparel, accessories, and shoes
- Ethics: Ethical factories, responsible sourcing
- Pricing: $-$$
Boden makes a point to use high quality, responsibly sourced materials for all of their products, even offering a 365-day quality guarantee. They prioritize responsible trading initiatives and support the HERproject which empowers, educates, and supports women working in supply chains.
Outland Denim
- Product Range: Men’s and women’s denim
- Ethics: Train and employ women who have experienced sex trafficking, employ water and energy reducing technology, sustainable supply chain
- Pricing: $$
Outland Denim works to eliminate exploitation through training, living wages, and education of their employees, many of whom come from backgrounds of injustice. They use up to 87% less water, 57% less energy, and 83% less chemicals to produce their minimal impact denim. The company aims for ‘Zero Exploitation’ through a supply chain that is 94% traceable, and carefully select materials that minimize impact on the environment.
4ocean
- Product Range: Men’s and women’s accessories and apparel, single use alternatives, beach gear, and more.
- Ethics: Ocean cleanup, environmentally and socially responsible supply chain, B Corp
- Pricing: $
4ocean bracelets are made from plastic recovered during their many ocean cleanups. Their captains and crews have recovered over 11 million pounds of trash from oceans since 2017.
Alice + Whittles
- Product Range: Women’s footwear
- Ethics: Traceable and sustainable clothing materials, ethical manufacturing
- Pricing: $$
Alice + Whittles makes simple but versatile shoes out of materials that are 90% sustainable and traceable. They partner with manufacturers, even moving into the regions where they’re located and getting to know the local communities.
Kotn
- Product Range: Men’s and women’s apparel
- Ethics: Ethical and traceable supply chain, B Corp, fair labor practices
- Pricing: $-$$
Kotn works directly with every step of their supply chain starting with the raw cotton. They call this “circular traceability” and think of it like farm-to-table but for clothing. The company works directly with 690 smallholder cotton farms, and saves water through their dyeing process.
Outerknown
- Product Range: Men’s and women’s apparel, accessories, and shoes
- Ethics: Fair Labor Association & Bluesign certified manufacturing, sustainable practices
- Pricing: $$
Outerknown was started by professional surfer Kelly Slater, and has a radical commitment to sustainability. 90% of the fibers they source are organic, recycled, or regenerated, and their jeans are guaranteed for life—meaning they’ll repair, replace, or recycle them for you as needed.
For Days
- Product Range: Men’s and women’s apparel
- Ethics: Zero waste, 100% recyclable, closed loop
- Pricing: $
For Days makes organic basics that are 100% recyclable, and aim to offer an easy way to get rid of old clothing so that it doesn’t wind up in a landfill. The company will give you a credit for returning old clothing and then upcycle it into new products. They even offer a “Take Back Bag” for $10 that you can fill with your old stuff and send back for recycling.
Krochet Kids
- Product Range: Men’s, women’s, and children’s hats
- Ethics: Ethically made, fair trade certified, sustainable materials
- Pricing: $
Krochet Kids and their sister brand Known Supply make it their priority to highlight and celebrate the individuals who are responsible for creating their products. Each item comes with a label that features the signature of the maker, and you can even go to their website to learn more about who they are.
Harvest & Mill
- Product Range: Men’s and women’s apparel
- Ethics: Grown and sewn in the USA, 100% organic, sustainable design, toxin-free
- Pricing: $-$$
Harvest & Mill is rebuilding supply chains based on ecological and ethical principles. All of their organic cotton is grown in the USA, and they independently sew their clothing in Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco. They can trace all of their materials back to organic cotton farms, and even have a line that is naturally-dyed by farmers and dye artists in Indiana and California. Their clothes and packaging are all compostable, and they don’t use plastic bags or mailers.
Eileen Fisher
- Product Range: Women’s apparel, accessories, and shoes
- Ethics: Full lifecycle approach, ethical manufacturing, repairs and buys back used clothes, fair trade, responsible fibers
- Pricing: $$$
Eileen Fisher has taken back over 1.4 million articles of clothing since 2010 to be resold or remade into new designs. They design their line as a system of simple versatile pieces that will work together for years. The brand’s clothing is made from sustainable materials, and they’re working to increase their use of recyclable fabrics. Additionally, they work to promote the connection between climate resiliency and women’s leadership through their Supporting Women in Environmental Justice grants.
Organic Basics
- Product Range: Men’s and women’s apparel and accessories
- Ethics: Low impact, sustainable clothing materials, supports environmental activism
- Pricing: $-$$
Organic Basics puts sustainable thinking at the center of everything, choosing eco-friendly fabrics and factories for their designed to last products. They even have a low impact website that reduces their carbon emissions from data transfer by up to 70%.
Threads 4 Thought
- Product Range: Men’s, women’s, and children’s apparel and accessories
- Ethics: Sustainable clothing made from recycled materials, eco-friendly manufacturing, charitable involvement
- Pricing: $
Threads 4 Thought makes their clothing out of sustainable fabrics including regenerated beech trees, organic cotton, and recycled plastic bottles and fishing nets. Their factories use less than half of the water typically used per garment, and 80% of their wastewater is recycled and reused.
NAADAM
- Product Range: Men’s and women’s apparel and accessories
- Ethics: Transparency, ethical practices, cultural preservation, environmental sustainability
- Pricing: $$
NAADAM provides ethical conditions for the animals behind the raw materials that make up their line of knitwear. The company works to protect the planet through anti-desertification programs, local nonprofit work, and supplier partnerships committed to ethical and environmental standards. They are working to go carbon neutral, reduce their packaging, and use traceable, renewable, and recycled materials.
Boody
- Product Range: Men’s, women’s, and baby apparel and accessories
- Ethics: Organic bamboo, nontoxic, fair wages, zero waste manufacturing
- Pricing: $
Boody’s clothing is all made from organic, toxin-free bamboo plants, which are sustainable and require much less water than cotton plants. All the boxes they use are recycled and printed with vegetable-based ink. They have a zero waste manufacturing system and their products are responsibly produced by workers paid fair wages.
Conscious Step
- Product Range: Unisex socks
- Ethics: Products support causes, ethical workplaces, GOTS certified supply chain, organic cotton, fair trade
- Pricing: $
Each pair of Conscious Step socks supports one of their partner organizations, providing funding for causes like conserving rainforests, fighting hunger, and restoring oceans. The socks themselves are made from sustainably sourced organic cotton and are made by workers in fair and transparent working conditions.
Tribe Alive
- Product Range: Women’s apparel and accessories
- Ethics: Fair wages, eco-friendly materials, safe work environments, designed to last, B Corp, fair trade
- Pricing: $$
Tribe Alive produces sustainable, long lasting clothing made by women artisans in Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, India, and Peru. They provide safe and meaningful work environments, and their manufacturing process is free of synthetic fibers and toxic chemicals and dyes. They ship every order in biodegradable mailers, and nearly all of their products are made using upcycled or organic materials.
Nisolo
- Product Range: Men’s and women’s shoes
- Ethics: Ethically produced, carbon neutral, B Corp
- Pricing: $$
Nisolo shoes are made in factories where every worker is earns a living wage and are provided with in-house financial literacy training. For every purchase, Nisolo contributes to help protect forests in the Amazon Basin, which has saved 138K trees from being uprooted so far. They also partner with Soles4Souls to build a circular fashion model—you can send them your gently worn and used shoes and they’ll be given to micro-entrepreneurs in the developing world to re-sell in their communities. I own a pair of Nisolo boots and they are comfortable, cute, and high quality.
DL1961
- Product Range: Men’s, women’s, and children’s denim
- Ethics: Sustainable clothing materials, ethical manufacturing, energy efficient
- Pricing: $$
DL1961 is committed to ethical practices, fair wages, reasonable hours, and positive working conditions for all their workers. They have an on-site heat recovery system that fuels their production, providing energy efficiency while reducing their carbon footprint. Their denim is made without chemicals, and they use air to create wash variations without water. They also recycle and treat 98% of the water used in manufacturing the denim with their in-house water recycling system.
Verloop
- Product Range: Unisex hats, gloves, and scarves
- Ethics: Reduces textile waste by making products out of remnant yarn
- Pricing: $
Verloop makes bright, colorful accessories using deadstock material, saving it from heading to landfills. Their closed loop system is sustainable and prevents waste.
Vitamin A
- Product Range: Women’s swimwear and apparel
- Ethics: Recycled fabrics, locally made, ethical manufacturing
- Pricing: $$
The founder of Vitamin A was searching for recycled fabrics for her line of swimwear but was told that there was “no market” for it. So she decided to design the fabric herself, resulting in the first premium swim fabric made from recycled nylon fibers. The brand also produces their products locally, reducing emissions from shipping.
Alternative Apparel
- Product Range: Men’s, women’s, and childrens’ apparel
- Ethics: Organic cotton, recycled fabrics
- Pricing: $
Alternative Apparel makes basics for the whole family from recycled materials and organic fabrics. Growing cotton without herbicides and pesticides reduces environmental impact and their upcycled materials keep textile waste out of landfills.
Allbirds
- Product Range: Men’s and women’s shoes
- Ethics: Eco-friendly materials, energy-efficient manufacturing,
- Pricing: $
Allbirds shoes are made from natural materials like merino wool and eucalyptus trees. Their process uses 60% less energy than materials used in typical synthetic shoes and their packaging is made from recycled cardboard. They even make their shoelaces from recycled plastic bottles!
tentree
- Product Range: Men’s, women’s, and kids apparel and accessories
- Ethics: Ethically made, organic, B Corp, eco-friendly, gives back to the environment
- Pricing: $
tentree plants ten trees for each product sold, hence the name of the brand. The company aims to plant 1 billion trees by 2030, and has planted over 30 million so far. The clothing is made from sustainable materials like wood pulp, recycled plastic bottles, organic cotton, and hemp.
Cuyana
- Product Range: Bags, clothing, and accessories
- Ethics: Ethical manufacturing, sustainably sourced
- Pricing: $$-$$$
Cuyana’s product lifecycle is three parts: produce responsibly, maximize wear, and extend life. They built their supply chain to support responsible production from raw materials to finished goods. Their products use sustainable materials like recycled cashmere and organic poplin, and the company offers a two-year warranty. If you need any repairs Cuyana will facilitate them for you, extending the life of their products and reducing waste.
Girlfriend Collective
- Product Range: Women’s activewear
- Ethics: Recycled materials, waste reducing manufacturing processes, fair trade
- Pricing: $-$$
Girlfriend Collective makes their eco-friendly workout wear out of old plastic bottles, fishing nets, and other waste. They’ve recycled over 7 million plastic water bottles to date, and their eco-friendly manufacturing processes have saved over 16 million gallons of water.
The Classic T-Shirt Company
- Product Range: Men’s and women’s t-shirts
- Ethics: Organic cotton, fair trade, gives back to charities
- Pricing: $
The Classic T-Shirt Company makes all their products in California using 100% organic cotton. Their shirts are designed for longevity so don’t worry about shrinkage from washing them. They’re also fair trade advocates and a charities-driven company.
ABLE
- Product Range: Women’s bags, shoes, accessories, and apparel
- Ethics: Fair wages, ethical production, recycled materials, sustainable clothing manufacturing
- Pricing: $$
ABLE makes it their goal to create sustainable opportunities for women, providing workers rights, protections, and fair wages to all employees. They mail all of their orders in recycled packaging, and repurpose leather wastage into small leather goods. The company works with the tanneries they get their supplies from to ensure they’re engaged in clean water practices and that local water sources remain safe for the community.
Amour Vert
- Product Range: Women’s apparel
- Ethics: Made in USA, sustainable clothing materials, plants a tree for each tee purchased
- Pricing: $$
Amour Vert is another brand that plants a tree for each tee purchased and have planted over 250K in North America since they opened. The brand makes all of their products in California using sustainable materials like wood-based fiber, ethical wool, mulberry silk, and organic cotton. Their packaging is compostable and they use recycled materials for their shipping boxes.
Pact
- Product Range: Men’s, women’s, kid’s, and baby apparel
- Ethics: Organic materials, fair trade
- Pricing: $
All of Pact’s clothing is made from certified organic cotton, which saves water and uses no toxic chemicals. They partner with Fair Trade Certified factories to provide safe working conditions and environmental protection to local communities. They also offer the option to offset the carbon impact of your shipment and you can use their shipping boxes to donate your old clothes to nonprofits.
unspun
- Product Range: Men’s and women’s denim
- Ethics: Localized sourcing, low impact fabrics, zero inventory
- Pricing: $$
unspun custom-builds jeans for each customer. How? Simply use your smartphone to do a body scan and they’ll build a pair of jeans that will fit you just right. Because each pair is made to order, they have zero inventory which means zero waste from unsold items. They’re also working to reduce all the waste from their manufacturing process, which currently uses 20% less CO2 in production than traditional jeans.
Indigenous
- Product Range: Men’s and women’s apparel
- Ethics: Artisan-made clothing, organic materials, B Corp
- Pricing: $$
Indigenous uses natural fibers such as organic cotton, free-range alpaca wool, and tencel (wood pulp), as well as low-impact dyes that are free from harmful chemicals. The brand crafts all their clothing by hand using eco-friendly manufacturing processes that save 45,600 lbs of carbon dioxide and 13 million gallons of water each year.
Sézane
- Product Range: Women’s apparel, shoes, and accessories
- Ethics: Ethical production, low waste, eco-friendly materials
- Pricing: $$-$$$
Sézane currently uses eco-friendly materials for 70% of their product line, and aims to get to 80% next year. Their recycling program has reused over 12,000 articles of clothing since launch, and they use recycled cardboard for all of their shipping boxes.
EcoVibe
- Product Range: Men’s and women’s apparel and accessories, home goods, gardening supplies and planters
- Ethics: Locally sourced products, gives back to environmental causes
- Pricing: $
EcoVibe supports local designers, women, minority and family owned businesses, and small makers and manufacturers. They donate 1% of all online sales to environmental nonprofits and give back to their local community through events, classes, and workshops. How cute are these plant patterned face masks?
Fair Indigo
- Product Range: Men’s and women’s apparel, gifts
- Ethics: Organic cotton, earth-friendly dyes, ethical manufacturing
- Pricing: $
Fair Indigo makes their line of basics for men and women using organic cotton from two family farms in Peru. They ensure that all of their artisans and operators are treated fairly and provided with living wages, and give back to the communities through The Fair Indigo Foundation, which funds teachers’ salaries, books, building improvements, and computer labs.
Tradlands
- Product Range: Women’s apparel
- Ethics: Ethical production, sustainable clothing materials
- Pricing: $$-$$$
Tradlands makes timeless, well-made essentials that focus on quality and durability, so you can wear their pieces for years to come. They use exceptional, consciously sourced fabrics like cotton, silk, and tencel and provide living wages, clean and bright work environments, and US-based standards of working hours to their producers.
Nudie Jeans Co
- Product Range: Men’s and women’s apparel
- Ethics: Sustainable supply chain, recycled materials, living wages
- Pricing: $$$
Nudie Jeans offers free repairs for life, so one purchase should last a long time. They use sustainable materials like organic and recycled cotton, and reuse old jeans to patch and repair products and create new pieces. They select suppliers and manufacturers that are ethical, treat workers fairly, and work to use energy and water saving technologies.
OhSevenDays
- Product Range: Women’s apparel and accessories
- Ethics: Uses deadstock fabrics, ethical production
- Pricing: $$-$$$
OhSevenDays creates sustainable, fashionable pieces using leftover fabric from large garment manufacturers. Unused fabric typically gets tossed into landfills, but thanks to their location in Istanbul, one of the largest textile manufacturing capitals in the world, they’re able to use it to make their regenerative pieces.
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