Finding ethical fashion: Good on You

As you might know by now, I avoid buying new clothes. It works 99% of the time, but there are is that 1% when it doesn’t work out. There are some things that need to be bought new. But if I do buy new, I buy ethical. If there is a sustainable and fair option, I choose that one. Sometimes there is no ethical option (yet), but those moments are rare. After years of experience into this journey, I now recognize greenwashing and know which brands to turn to when I buy new. However, when I was new to this subject, the fashion industry can be like a maze. That’s why I want to share a tool for finding ethical fashion: Good On You.

Rare Occasions

You’ve probably seen it in the yearly posts about how sustainable I actually lived that year (2019/2020 can be found here). I list the new clothes that I buy each year for that post and it’s never been zero. Like right now, I am looking for one specific thing and I have been for months. I need a black pair of shorts to wear under skirts. I want it to be cotton, linnen or bamboo. Very specific and so I can’t seem to find it secondhand. Or lend it, or swap it. That’s when I turn to my last resort: buying new. If I choose to be buy new, the quest begins. I search for this product online (physical stores are rarely ethical). But how do I know which brands are sustainable and ethical? That’s where Good on You comes in.

Good on You

This is the place to be for finding sustainable and ethical fashion. Good on You is a website (and they have an app too, but I prefer very little apps on my phone for the sake of minimalism) about ethical fashion. Just type in Good On You via Ecosia (or Google, but Google sucks) and you can find the website on any device. There are multiple ways to use it. What I usually do it is just scan through the website. Posts about fashion are posted almost daily. Today the latest post is: ‘Is Shopping Secondhand Sustainable?’ or ‘How Ethical is Mango?’.

There is just a lot to find. Information about materials, brands, products and more. You can use it like a blog and just check it frequently like I do. However, Good on You is also absolutely wonderful for very specific research. It’s mainly created as an accessable way to check brands. You can just type in any brand and you’ll know everything you want to know.

Brands

I’ll walk you through it with an example. Let’s say I saw a cute dress at Boohoo. Boohoo itself does not inform about you about sustainability or anything at their website. And besides, doing research can take a long time and not everybody has that much time. So, I just go to the Good on You website and type in ‘Boohoo’.

Then, I can find everything I need to know. First I see the score: 1/5, a brand to avoid. Then, I see one sentence: the most important thing to know, which says: ‘Boohoo is not taking adequate steps to ensure payment of a living wage for its workers’. Below this you see the specific scores on people, planet and animals. Boohoo scores 1/5 on people and 2/5 on planet and animals. Summary: this brand sucks. This is most important. If you have little time, you know that you should not buy the dress at Boohoo.

However, Good on You provides more. Below the scores there are a few alineas of information about the brand. Nice to have if you’re interested, but if you have little time you already know enough by taking a peek. At the bottom of the website Good on You offers alternatives for the brand you searched for. In this case CHNGE and Delikate Rayne to name two. That’s amazing! Maybe we can then find a cute dress there, instead of the sucky Boohoo. Good on You is a walhalla for ethical purchases.

Greenwashing and Lay-Out

Good on You is amazing! The information itself is obviously most important. This way you can make ethical fashion choices and learn more about the industry. I think this is really important with the amount of greenwashing going on these days. Fast fashion brands make claims about their ‘sustainable’ fashion all the time. It truly annoys me, because it’s simply not true or just a small part of the whole story. Good on You tells the whole story. But what makes Good on You a 10+ is the lay-out. Their website is soooo beautiful! I love going through it for information. It’s logical and really pretty too. Good on You has is everything you need.