an inconvenient wardrobe: welcome to the tough conversation.

Welcome to An Inconvenient Wardrobe, the database of uncomfortable but—because despite questions being tough we're still asking them, because we want to make our ethical dreams for the industry a reality—persistently optimistic questions. We think sustainable fashion isn’t here to make us feel bad.

We explore this concept via this written podcast, our go-to database laden with informal interviews. Our interviewees are active thinkers and doers in the field of sustainable and ethical fashion, as well as people who have nothing to do with fashion at all.

A good friend of ours that works in sustainable fashion recently confided in us that he doesn't like our title [An Inconvenient Wardrobe] explaining,

"Sustainable fashion isn't supposed to be inconvenient. An inconvenient 'truth', yes, was non-debatable. But a wardrobe? That's not true. The whole point of changing the narrative is to make better clothing convenient!"

And we agree that, yes, that's the goal. But it's not easy. In fact sustainability in a world driven by instant gratification and disposability, is completely "inconvenient." The ability of an individual to rethink something as essential and basic as their routine shopping habits—because they fails to live up to sustainable decency—is inconvenient.

Even us, who make a career out of ethical fashion, still struggle with it. If we struggle this way, what will the masses wear?

There's the argument that companies should develop more innovative technologies to ensure fabrics are created sustainably from the beginning—but this is an arduous, lengthy, complicated, and most of all an expensive process. In order to ensure that the men and women (mostly women: roughly 85% of garment workers are women) crafting our clothing are being treated with the utmost respect (meaning zero human rights violations) requires more monitoring than 85% of U.S. based companies make (or have?) time for. Fashion is one of capitalism’s favorite children. After all, less mass production results in lower profit margins and therefore less money filling company's (and their dependent employees!) bankbooks: totally inconvenient!

We have a woven a web we may not be able to get out of. Until we absolutely have to. If we don't start making more inconvenient choices, the inconvenient truth will set in upon us whether we are ready for it or not. That is, the continuation of the "convenient" lifestyle we've set in motion will also, in due and inevitable time, be also inconvenient.

Consider:

Pollution will be inconvenient.

Overproduction of “stuff”—or rather, of clothes—is inconvenient.

Overflowing closets full of useless and unused clutter making it difficult to know what to wear, or even what we really own: inconvenient.

Newsletters flooding our inboxes about sales: inconvenient.

Marketing telling us we're old news unless we wear new clothes: inconvenient.

Keeping Up With The Kardashians: inconvenient.

Traveling with huge suitcases full of clothes: inconvenient.

People dying in factory collapses: inconvenient (tragic, unnecessary).

Harsh chemicals treating leathers and acid wash jeans, ingested and disposed of into nature improperly: inconvenient (tragic, unnecessary).

Choosing willful ignorance about how many people suffer as a result of our greed in ways that aren’t always visible: we are the most inconvenient aspect of their everyday lives.

But we need to tackle and embrace this inconvenience with optimism. Enter: An Inconvenient Wardrobe. Thank you to everyone that has inspired us to be brave as we embark upon this journey. Everywhere we look we have been told countless times in one way or another that, “The world is not ready for sustainable fashion.” But it has to be.