Wow! Exactly one year ago TheStoryofClothes.com officially launched – right as the first social distancing measures arrived in Canada. Somehow, even with the countless hours of work that it took, I never thought I would be here. I have a logo?? A business plan?? Brands who pay me to work with them?? What??

Here are a few things that I learned throughout this process:

• Always look where the information is coming from. My initial instincts about the sustainable fashion space were right: there just isn’t enough credible information out there, and tons of misinformation. Fashion isn’t the second-most polluting industry in the world [1].  There’s information in Elizabeth Cline’s “The Conscious Closet” that borders on wrong or at the very least misleading [2]. Not everything that’s marketed as sustainable actually is. My rule of thumb is to always ask who is talking and what gives them the right to assert what they’re assering. Did the person actually study textile science? Are they citing a scientific study? How was the study done, by whom, and was it peer-reviewed? It’s a lot of work, but that’s what it takes to get credible information.
• Speaking of credible information, it is hard AF to get. This is why I haven’t yet published guides on eco fabrics – apparently, to really understand what’s going on, I need to read a few textile science textbooks. Fine by me, and it will take forever, but libraries are closed where I live, so I’m limited to the academic resources that I can find online. But it is my goal to come out with articles on each sustainable textile and summarize for you what’s REALLY going on and what you can do about it as a consumer.

Anyway, just wanted to say thanks so much for your reading and encouragement. I’m so touched that after all of this research and confusion and trial and error, this actually turned into something coherent. I’m glad it did and I hope that you get lots of value out of reading it!

xoxo,

Kristina

P.S. This is the logo I mentioned earlier. I’d love for it to become a “quality assurance” of sorts as people browse the website of a sustainable brand.

P.S.S. Footnotes:

[1] Also see Eco Cult’s analysis on this.

[2] I’m referring to the part where she says, about a third of the way into the book, “My rule of thumb is to choose clothing that is at least two-thirds of one single material. [A product designer she contacted – not a textile scientist -] recommends avoiding clothes that are a mix of more than three materials as that’s a sign of cost-cutting”. I created content around this second sentence and had several textile science/industry people message me and tell me that it’s wrong. Apparently, it is very possible to have a mix of three or more materials that’s good quality, where each material in the blend plays a specific role in making the fabric very well-suited for its purpose. Also, Elizabeth Cline went went back on her original stance on sustainability and sustainable fashion in a way that I personally find bizarre. But that’s material for a different blog post, maybe. I took her books off of my recommended resources page.