Sustainable fashion in L.A.: Can creative fashion coexist with environmental responsibility?
As Los Angeles’s fashion industry embraces eco-friendly practices, designers and entrepreneurs face the challenge of making sustainability accessible.
By Lola Thomas
Home to approximately 108,000 actors, trendy restaurants and overpriced lattes, Los Angeles maintains a value of exclusivity and continues to cultivate a culture of high consumption. As Los Angeles brands establish themselves, a common question is: How can they find a balance of creativity, culture, and sustainability in a city driven by trends?
The fashion industry in Los Angeles is nationally ranked No. 1 in producing apparel, and No. 2 in jewelry wholesale, supported by the city’s extensive network of brands, designers and manufacturers. Yet, as much as LA champions the avant-garde, the city’s rapid cycle of trends and overabundance of choice have created an unsustainable relationship between fashion and the environment.
Designer Sue Stemp founded St. Roche, a sustainable fashion company based in Los Angeles. 95 percent of their woven garments are manufactured in India, and Stemp said she travels to India twice a year to “see first hand” how their clothes are made. Stemp said she frequently collaborates with local artisans in India.
“I started to have an idea of us putting a small collection together. I’ve always been very interested in vintage clothes, vintage embroideries, and boarding Victorian cottons,” Stemp said. “So I thought, maybe I could try making something like that with organic cotton, and also using traditional working with artisans in India, using their traditional techniques, like hand embroidery or hand dying or hand printing,” she said. “That’s something very important to me because it’s keeping their skill alive.
Embracing cultural tradition has become a key aspect in sustainable fashion initiatives. According to The University of South Carolina, cultural values in fashion designs can entice customers to purchase from that specific brand. Journalist Melissa Magsaysay, co-founder of Duster, a clothing line inspired by Filipino housedresses, said she noticed a lack of dresses marketed as casual daywear.
“I just felt like there was a white space in the market there where there’s lots of dresses, but if we could market it really as calling them Duster, not a dress, creating duster as a category, almost, I saw a real like opportunity there,” Magsaysay said.
Despite the growing momentum towards more sustainable brands, one problem remains: the price. Sustainable materials, such as cotton, are 25 percent more expensive than polyester., making it more difficult for consumers to be shop sustainably while staying within budget. Stemp highlighted the difficulty of balancing affordability and sustainability in her own business
“It’s really difficult — We’re a very small team. We always really try and keep the prices affordable. I mean, obviously not cheap, but they’re not crazy either,” Stemp said.“You have to be very careful and strategic, by the way you design things because you don’t want it to be too expensive.”
Magsaysay echoed this, saying that the fashion industry is largely based on anticipating the volume of clothes needed to accommodate customer demand and adjusting manufacturing practices from there. She added that she and her business partner have a good relationship with their factory, allowing their prices to be affordable.
“The factory we work with thankfully lets us run lower minimums and not pay an exorbitant amount for them — we pay for what we make,” Magsaysay said. “They give us lower minimums, and we’re not paying more for it. We’re still, sort of making that margin, and then we can keep a lower margin for our customer.”
While the price of sustainable fashion presents a significant challenge, educating customers on the long-term value of such purchases could help shift shopping habits. These conscious choices can play a role in making sustainability a more mainstream option. Despite this, Magsaysay said she has noticed a pattern in consumer habits.
“You know, beyond Amazon, we want everything quicker, so that doesn’t help,” Magsaysay said. “That disrupts the sustainability. There’s no sustainability in faster, right?”
However, Stemp expressed optimism for the future of sustainable fashion.
Even after working in this area, and this is sort of sustainable space for a long time now, and there’s so much I don’t know, and it’s changing all the time,” Stemp said. “What is interesting is the new technical fabric innovations, that’s amazing.”