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MADEWELL: greenwashing or champion of affordable sustainable fashion?


When comparing clothing brands for the purpose of finding a sustainable company to support, it's easy to get caught in a world of unfamiliar language and become confused about what sustainable and ethical production really means. This becomes especially true for companies who hint at sustainability, but aren't very transparent about their practices. One company that I've run into with this issue is Madewell.



Madewell has risen in popularity with young women due to its simple, but modern clothing line, friendly social media presence, and mid-range price point. Madewell is actually a subsidiary company of J. Crew, which was my first cue to dig a little more into their production practices and find out the truth about whether their clothes are actually made well. J. Crew's sustainability practices are evaluated over at the Good on You blog, and sadly it seems their efforts are a little lacking and by Good on You's standards, J. Crew is leaning more towards greenwashing than true sustainable & ethical business practices. (Recycling is great, but using it as a marketing strategy to sell thousands more pairs of jeans has a pretty huge overall negative effect on the environment.)

However, it's possible that Madewell has higher standards than their parent company. To me, the brand's name intentionally implies a more small-batch, handmade production process, which also implies sustainable and ethical practices. However, due to the rising consumer demand for sustainable clothing, many companies are taking advantage of names that hint at environmentally-friendly practices, without actually committing to the actions implied. 

Personally, I prefer a brand be transparent about their practices, even if those practices aren't sustainable or ethical. This allows the consumer to make an informed decision based on their values. For this reason, greenwashing is really a pet peeve of mine, as companies profit off of what they see as "trends" and pretend to align themselves with consumer's values.

To find out if Madewell is a brand committed to sustainable practices or simply another company benefiting from greenwashing, I did some research on their website. One of the first hallmarks of a sustainable clothing company is their transparency about where they source textiles, how they treat their employees, what their production process looks like, and so on. 

When visiting the "Do Well" and "Sustainability" pages on Madewell's website, there's quite a bit of information to sort through. The sustainability page links directly to J. Crew's website page about their business practices, which we have already seen may not exactly qualify as sustainable and ethical. For Madewell's "Do Well" page, I think the most transparent, promising piece of information contained on the page is the fact that their denim is certified Fair Trade, which indicates that it is produced in a way that meets sustainability and ethical standards.

Unfortunately, there isn't much information about any of the other products besides denim that Madewell offers. The "Do Well" initiative seems to encompass more corporate social responsibility and charity efforts than really outline sustainable and ethical business practices. For this reason, I think for now it is probably safer to say that Madewell doesn't differ too much from their parent company J. Crew in that they rely on the buzz around sustainable fashion to sell their products and boost their brand's reputation, but don't really follow through in practice.

I guess using resources to create a bunch of all-new vintage-inspired handbags is cool, though.





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