It's More Than You Think
What really goes into your clothes? A new garment label might just reveal the unvarnished truth.
It’s the simplest of ideas, but it might just be one of the best. What if fashion were to label what really goes into clothes? Not just the ingredients, but the health and environmental facts, the miles travelled and the wages paid. Look what labelling did for the food industry - from calorie counting to provenance, most of us now flip a food packet for a quick check before we chuck it in the trolley. Why not apply the same to fashion?
Peter Gorse, a textile researcher at Cranfield University, is on this. Originally an industrial designer of cleaner manufacturing processes, Gorse began exploring the idea as a standalone project when Covid halted his day job. “The current labelling on garments tells you next to nothing,” he told me last week. “Take country of origin - the chances are that to produce a garment it’s been through more than one country. Labels currently only tell a tiny fragment of the story.”
And so Gorse began a project “to see if I could describe a garment through data, rather than beautiful imagery and marketing.” His design template is the same as the Nutritional Facts Table designed for food. Information architecture at its best, designed to reveal the real story behind our clothes: fibre and chemical content, garment life, microfibre shedding, recycling, fuel sources and textile worker pay.
“The question is, do you think consumers require more information?” asks Gorse. “And if you think the answer to that is yes, then the question becomes, what should you tell them? And how do you go about communicating it?”
Compelling stuff, but this is where it gets tricky. When Gorse’s labelling work was spotted by a brand, he was quickly signed up (he won’t say which brand). Only the brand didn’t like what Gorse found. As you can see, in one garment he identified 112 synthetic chemicals, that it travelled 25,432 miles through its supply chain and sheds 137,951 microfibres per wash - and its textile workers earn 45% of the local living wage. Needless to say, he was dropped by the brand.
Imagine if governments mandated for this sort of information, as they did back in the 90s for food. Back then, food products quickly scaled back on saturated fat and sodium content, and scaled up more healthy ingredients to win over consumers. Isn’t this the answer to fashion’s greenwashing issue? Why not introduce an idea that already has a template in the food industry?
When Gorse’s work was dropped by the brand, (who tied him up on an exclusive deal for some time), they told him “We decided it's too early for us to try this.” Of course it’s not too early. As Dr. Achim Berg writes in Business of Fashion this week, “Time is running out. The year 2030 — which most companies have pegged as a magical deadline by which point change should start to materialise — is only 11 seasons away.”
Thank you for being part of this community on Substack. It’s wonderful to find an audience for these stories - no ads, no algorithms. If you read this for free and you enjoy it, please consider paying for it. You wouldn’t take a free anything forever, would you…?
Can we afford to hang around for legislation, if we have any hope of hitting net zero by 2050? A swing to the right in the recent European elections does not bode well, meanwhile New York’s state legislature ended its session for the year without passing The Fashion Act, a seismic piece of legislation many are pinning their hopes on. Gorse is upbeat: “There's going to be new labelling regulations coming out of the EU, and the product development footprint, which is sort of criteria for future design of sustainable garments,” he says. “And then you've got the digital product passports coming and extended producer responsibility. There's loads of it coming down the line.” The question is, how long will it take, and will it even happen?
For those brands that have done the work, garment labelling could be the quick signal to consumers that they are safe to buy this product. Safe, because mostly we have no idea what is really in our clothes. There are way more chemicals than you think, not least in the dye process, but also in treatments you don’t even know are there (because no label requires they be declared). If its machine washable, non iron, waterproof, moisture wicking… chemicals are involved.
I asked Rachel Carvell-Spedding, the founder of luxury British knitwear brand Navy Grey, what her approach was. I asked Rachel because I knew she would tell me the truth, and I knew she had done the work to understand every additive that goes into her precious, prized wool. “Anything that is dyed, even organically as our wool is, still requires some chemicals. The UK and Europe have very strict dyeing rules, but outside, it’s much less transparent and that’s why we just don’t go there. Even if you make your garment in the UK, that means you could still have your wool spun in in the far east – and it’s a real mixed bag as to how things are dyed there. For dyeing to be effective you need not just the dyes, but a wetting agent, a levelling agent and a pH regulating agent.
“Then yarn needs a spinning lubricant applied to the fibre to hold it together. As for treatments, we always use wool that is ‘untreated’ by which we mean we haven’t added anything to it to make it ‘machine washable’. Any wool that claims it is machine washable will have been subjected to a treatment which is laced with chemicals, because in effect you have to change the structure of the wool. That requires a harsh chlorine treatment.”
This is from Navy Grey, a small natural brand that prides itself on quality and origin and is prepared to be totally transparent about their processes. Imagine what a jumper from Shein goes through.
If you want real chapter and verse on the chemicals in our clothes, read the work of industry whistle blower Alden Wicker. Her website Ecocult has long been investigating issues around clothing, and in 2022 she published To Dye For, How Toxic Fashion is Making us Sick, a gripping account of her investigation into the Alaska Airlines staff who got very ill from wearing cheap synthetic uniforms, and who then successfully sued the airline for their crippling illness. Only last year three ‘Forever Chemicals’ manufacturers shelled out payments of $1bn, as they began to settle the first wave of claims over their poisoning of America’s drinking water.
“I don't understand why people are not more up in arms about how these companies knowingly released PFAs into the environment,” says Gorse. “PFA is a great example of total regulation failure. The myth that just because the product is on the shelves, it's safe. Millions of consumer products were sold with incredibly harmful, highly persistent chemicals. And we still haven't banned them.”
Forcing companies to reveal the chemicals, journeys and labour that really goes into their garments would put the power back into our hands to make better choices. With food, we know now if something has preservatives or additives in it, where it was grown, how far it has travelled. The food industry has continued to produce processed foods unchecked, but now it’s our choice whether or not we want to consume toxic foods directly. Do we not have the same right for the clothes we put next to our skin?
At the moment clothing manufacturers can use whatever chemicals they like and hope they don’t get caught. If they do, they just pay the fine. “The fines are much less than the profits you can make by doing it,” says Gorse. “Our clothes and our cooking utensils have actually poisoned our drinking water. I don't understand why we're not on the streets.”
Labels: who wants to be the first mover?
Until next week,
Tiff
Yes, good point, but as consumers we have knowledge and we have choices. Greenwashing would be less of a thing. The addictive nature and health costs of low value food is another debate entirely!
"With food, we know now if something has preservatives or additives in it, where it was grown, how far it has travelled."
Hm... you only know of these things (ingredients) and while it may receive headlines, if we look at current behavior and we can deduce that it won't make a difference. Food labels have been around since at least the 90's?
Have we seen a decrease in unhealthy foods since? Lower rates of obesity and diabetes?