Sustainable Menswear?

[Bromley]

What's up styleforum?! I'm a new member and happy to have found this space.

I'm a classic menswear type of guy (don't love chasing trends), but always love good essentials. I'm really interested in finding menswear brands that build sustainability into the foundation of their brand and trying to make this world a better place. Anyone found good brands for this? Most of the brands that I see that are working hard towards sustainability tend to be outdoor or surf brands.

I've seen Taylor Stitch, and think they do good work in sustainability, but their aesthetic is a bit "mariner" for me. Any recommendations?

Hi, Don's Style, welcome to this weird place. I know Stoffa makes an effort toward sustainability. It does seem true that there aren't as many classic menswear brands doing "sustainability" stuff as casual/outdoor brands. If environmental concerns are your top priority, buying vintage/used as much as possible is probably your best bet. If you find any classic menswear-oriented brands out there doing really great things in the direction of sustainability, please share.

Also, I think the big "sustainability" stumbling block for classic menswear is cloth. Casual clothes, outdoor gear, etc. are better suited to unusual cloths, whereas classic menswear is not. The more "sustainable" cloths tend to be outside the realm of CM-- recycled poly, hemp, anything natural-dyed or undyed. Even with local, small-scale production, CM will tend to require higher-impact cloths.

A note about Goodwill-- I don't know how much they incinerate vs. recycle, but I know they end up supplying much of the material that goes into recycled fiber home insulation. That's not much, but it's something.

 

[FlyingHorker]

Hi, Don's Style, welcome to this weird place. I know Stoffa makes an effort toward sustainability. It does seem true that there aren't as many classic menswear brands doing "sustainability" stuff as casual/outdoor brands. If environmental concerns are your top priority, buying vintage/used as much as possible is probably your best bet. If you find any classic menswear-oriented brands out there doing really great things in the direction of sustainability, please share.

Also, I think the big "sustainability" stumbling block for classic menswear is cloth. Casual clothes, outdoor gear, etc. are better suited to unusual cloths, whereas classic menswear is not. The more "sustainable" cloths tend to be outside the realm of CM-- recycled poly, hemp, anything natural-dyed or undyed. Even with local, small-scale production, CM will tend to require higher-impact cloths.

A note about Goodwill-- I don't know how much they incinerate vs. recycle, but I know they end up supplying much of the material that goes into recycled fiber home insulation. That's not much, but it's something.

Marling & Evans push/market their undyed cloth. I don't know how environmentally friendly it actually is, but undyed cloths work great for winter clothes.

 

[zippyh]

I promise I'll be done after this, but this rudeness really ought to be addressed.



(bad "i am a gentleman" jokes)

Are jokes really bad if someone laughs at them? More to the point: what do you care? Your obvious dislike for anything with a whiff of 'gentleman' in it suggests that you are either 'triggered' by this word in particular, or that you have difficulty separating sarcasm and satire from ordinary writing, or that you are especially bothered by jokes you don't find funny. Regardless of which it is, I'll be sure to put an '/s' at the end of my jokes from now on when I know you're likely to take part in the convo. Or you could just... I don't know... scroll past them?


(really dumb information/terrible opinions)

This is particularly rich coming from a fashion blogger, but I suppose one can't think of everything at once. Since you decline to provide specifics, I assume that you aren't referring to any of my posts which have to do with my personal opinions on style, and more the ones which contradict some deeply-held #menswear orthodoxy - as evinced by the fanciful colouration of 'ignorant,' as though there were a singular body of wisdom to be learnt.

Some people prefer their tailors to work for them, and not the other way round, you see. And when a tailor's opinions are sometimes contradicted by the opinions of other tailors (and by your own admission, the approach of a tailor to his work is constrained by his previous experience - i.e., a house style), one can be forgiven for assuming that the word of a single tailor is not sacred knowledge, no matter how pretty his shoulders.

As far as other information is concerned, I try not to speak about things with which I have no direct experience. Even when I do, the opinions I form may be mistaken, but it's rather impudent of you to call them dumb. From other posts, it appears that you once attended graduate school, and yet you hesitate to add references for your assertions of other people's views (it must have been a STEM field). I realize that you are a fashion blogger, and so the success your trade relies upon the cultivation of a beautiful aura of insider information and fundamental knowledge in a field of studies so wide-ranging that any honest human being could hardly lay serious claim to it without risking becoming a laughingstock to outsiders. That said, when your own posts contain patently unhistorical information or sweeping, authoritarian generalities without much evidence beyond your own opinion or the opinions of other bloggers, whose own expertise is as uncredentialed as anyone else's, but presented as informed (by whom?) as opposed to ignorant, the matter is quite out of my hands. We cannot be partial individualists - we either all are or none.


(It's not fun. It's not educational. It's not a community.)

Hmm... fun is debatable. In my experience, sniping of threads usually occurs when the topic has exhausted its point, or when the point of the topic sucked anyway. As far as educational: that is true. I have never made it my mission to educate anyone on the subject of clothing, mostly because I have no patience for it. More importantly, I have always thought that buying fancy clothing and cultivating your own style should be an individualistic pursuit, and not one that defers to higher authorities. I suppose that also applies to community, since a well-mannered group of people discussing ideas is probably a good thing, but a communal mindset of what is and is not a proper opinion to hold is assuredly a bad one.


At the end of the day, all of this is just clothes. I suppose that is where most of my amusement comes from as I poke fun at the ideal of the #menswear fashion lifestyle - absurdity. If we cannot laugh at the present, we risk becoming cantankerous old groots.

Perhaps I am one also - but at least I have a butler. (/s)

Do you honestly think anyone read this?

 

[Keith Taylor]

What's up styleforum?! I'm a new member and happy to have found this space.

I'm a classic menswear type of guy (don't love chasing trends), but always love good essentials. I'm really interested in finding menswear brands that build sustainability into the foundation of their brand and trying to make this world a better place. Anyone found good brands for this? Most of the brands that I see that are working hard towards sustainability tend to be outdoor or surf brands.

I've seen Taylor Stitch, and think they do good work in sustainability, but their aesthetic is a bit "mariner" for me. Any recommendations?

Don’s Style, I’d like to apologise for the way your thread was derailed. I’ve been reading here a couple of years and it usually doesn’t get this silly. Yours was a good question deserving of better answers, and I hope they’re yet to come. Please don’t give up on us

 

[Nobilis Animus]

Do you honestly think anyone read this?

Not really, no. Most anyone never reads.

 

[zippyh]

Not really, no. Most anyone never reads.

You should consider writing less. It would save people a lot of scrolling.

 

[Panama]

Do you honestly think anyone read this?

?

 

[radicaldog]

It's actually a good fiber for clothing. I have a couple hemp pieces and they are durable and have a good feel to them. Don't knock it before you try it. It has nothing to do with weed when used in this application. Keep an open mind about how we can have a positive impact on our planet and people through our fashion consumption.

I have a 100% hemp sportcoat--a fairly plain and open weave, PoW with a windowpane. I think the cloth was from a Drapers book. The way it feels and tailors is somewhere between linen and cotton. It doesn't drape so well but my tailor did a decent job with it. Still, I can't imagine this being a staple material for a tailored wardrobe. I also used to have a slubby RRL hemp-cotton work shirt, but the fabric literally ripped in several places. A shame because I really liked it.

 

[Count de Monet]

It’s not so much that they’re powerless to enforce them, more that there are very few land use rules to enforce.

Mongolians are a very unusual people because it’s a nomadic culture. Until relatively recently - the middle of the 20th century - almost everyone in the country lived nomadically, shifting with the seasons along with their herds. In 1950 the capital of Ulaanbaatar was home to only 70,000 people while the other 90% of the population at that time roamed around. Even today close to half of the population still live nomadically to some extent. My own father in law lives in a ger that could be packed up on the back of a cart in a sweaty afternoon.

As a result of this the concept of private land ownership is still fairly alien to Mongolians. They’ve made their peace with it in the cities where there are fixed structures and it makes sense, but if you suggested that the countryside could be similarly owned they’d look at you as if you’d gone mad. It would be like suggesting to them that the government could take ownership of the air.

I think if any government tried to impose land use rules on herders who have been roaming with their animals since the days of Chinggis Khan they wouldn’t make it to the next election, but in any case it would never occur to politicians to try to impose them, because they themselves would be horrified by the idea. The national culture is so entwined with nomadic life that it would be unthinkable to change it.

With that in mind they’d have to approach the problem from a different angle. I dunno, tax goat ownership? They need to get creative, though, because at this rate there won’t be much steppe left to save a couple of decades from now.

Thank you. Very interesting.

 

[AX2007]

I have always assumed that "fast" fashion is the least sustainable of all options controlling for all other factors... the resources that go into producing a $10 tee-shirt that will likely be replaced in a year, multiplied by let's say five years, seem to be much more than a shirt that requires a bit more upfront investment in resources, costs $50, and will last 5 years.

I must admit that I know little of land use, I work in energy and tend to focus on that aspect of sustainability, but I've worked on/read through lifecycle assessments for a few different industries and except for a few outliers, similar products tend to use the similar resources, and small investments in quality go a long way to reducing turn over.

 

[volcanotristate]

from the research I've done, bamboo comes with it's own issues as well as it takes a ton of chemicals to break down the bamboo into useable fiber for fashion implementation. Plus most of the brands that I've seen with bamboo have been a bit "crunchy".

All my bamboo jackets are silk like

 

[Phileas Fogg]

Poor people should stop buying new clothes and take hand me downs from their betters.
People who are well do to and have money are the only ones who should be buying new clothes.
Besides, seeing all those poor people downtown shopping is depressing. I hate the look on their faces when I’m trying to enjoy a cocktail.

 

[Panama]

All my bamboo jackets are silk like

Rayon is so sexy...

 

[Shirtmaven]

Rayon is so sexy...

Rayon like bamboo. Is an intensive process to break down the fibers to create a yarn.. Rayon of old used a lot of dyes with chemicals that left communities with unhealthy water. Those shirts were beautiful

 

[volcanotristate]

But not as durable as my double Knit