Road to Responsible Style
Welcome to The Good Wear - a place dedicated to exploring what ethical fashion can mean for our wardrobes and purchases. This blog was created to seek ways to be a better fashion consumer - by paying attention to what we purchase. The topics featured will focus on fair trade products, companies empowering communities, sustainability, and how to style a responsible wardrobe. As a beginner myself, I'm here to seek authenticity in the industry and search for ways to make responsible style practical, affordable and fun.
So the first question is... what even is a "responsible style"?
Well... "responsible style" or "ethical fashion" has developed as a part of the fashion industry that is focused on socially conscious issues: worker's fair wages, fair hours, sustainably sourced material, eco-friendly production, up-to-code factory conditions, support of global communities, transparency, brand integrity, and reliable (high quality) product. That's a long list, but a necessary one at that, considering the fashion industry employs 60 million people around the world with factories in almost every country.
A beginner term-to-know going into this blog would be "supply chain". It is the process that involves the production and distribution of product - meaning it's a big part of how your clothes go from the company to your closet. The supply chain for a company is a big deal, but often times, not public knowledge because there's no legal regulation for transparency of where our clothes and materials come from. This creates the socially conscious issues listed above, which over time, has created a call for action in the "ethical fashion" world.
So regardless of your self-status for being "fashionable" or having "style", the truth is, if you wear clothes... you are impacted as a fashion consumer so The Good Wear is for all of us.
With this simplified overview, The Good Wear will be focused on seeking what ethical fashion is and how we approach to our shopping habits can really make a difference. My hope is that The Good Wear breaks down the barriers that make it hard for us to understand what "ethical fashion" is or who is a "transparent company" (Hint: it has to do with their supply chain).
But this search does not mean we have to throw out our clothes, become someone we're not, or go broke making purchases. It means we can make small, meaningful choices to challenge ourselves over time to think about the impacts of our purchases.
The Good Wear will be answering questions like... "where do my clothes come from?", "what are ethical fashion companies and are they even affordable?" and "Can all this 'consumer change' really make a difference?"
And although this blog is not the first to be focused on responsible fashion, transparency, or ethics, we can bring a new perspective in our community to relay the importance of how we are investing in our closets. There are hundreds of brands, companies and individuals out there that are dedicated to this purpose... so let's get started!
