Is ethical fashion too slow to compete – or am I just impatient?

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I It was never my intention to get stroppy with the ethical fashion brand. I came across their Instagram ad, for a beautiful forest green dress, at a time when I was already thinking about how to shop better and avoid fast fashion. The Unfolded brand promised high quality, no waste and fair pay for garment workers; the dress, at £47, looked every bit as good as its sustainability credentials. It took a handful of clicks, a matter of seconds to order it. I didn’t bother with the fine print but went about my day and looked forward to wearing it to a few spring events.

Four weeks later, spring was in full swing and I had not yet received the dress. Unfolded regularly emailed me with cheerful updates in the tone of Innocent smoothies. My dress was ‘cut’, ‘stitched’, ‘picked’. Five, then six weeks passed. Seven weeks later I emailed customer service. “I have to ask: when will I receive this dress? While I want to support sustainable fashion, I don’t think you made it clear that it would take another six weeks to arrive,” I huffed.

An apologetic employee responded, explaining the label’s “zero waste” ethos: each item is made from scratch after a customer orders it; there is no inventory waiting to be shipped – plus some orders have been held up in customs as well. Unfolded’s standard delivery time was four to six weeks, so it was only slightly behind schedule. “We hope you will be pleased with your product when it arrives!” she signed off jauntily.

At this point I had to have a little talk with myself. Was I an eco Karen? Rationally, I knew it was Asos, Amazon and Shein that had made me this way: a greedy retail monster, bitten by the radioactive combination of three-click transactions and next-day delivery. I knew that kid shopping meant slower shopping – I just didn’t expect it to be at a snail’s pace.

I tried to get back to my motivation for buying the dress. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, one truckload of clothing is landfilled or burned every second. About 30 percent of the clothing made worldwide each year remains unsold. Major retailers know this will happen. Google “Chile clothing pile” for the kind of place they end up – it will turn your stomach.

Moreover, garment workers – the vast majority of whom are women – suffer from this race to the bottom. Documentary by Andrew Morgan The actual costs estimates that less than 2 percent of the people who make our clothes earn a living wage; undercover reporting from 2022 revealed that some Chinese factory workers earned as little as 3 cents per garment. I knew that by running a slower business, Unfolded was doing something positive, countering the fast-fashion culture. Why couldn’t I just wait?

But I knew that if I couldn’t do it, others wouldn’t either. If the first wave of sustainability-curious shoppers encounters a slow or unclear customer journey and finds it off-putting, how would this type of brand ever catch on?

“The problem is that consumers just don’t have that mindset,” says Alison Lowe, who works with brands on this topic. A UEL lecturer and author of How to Start Your Own Fashion Labelshe tells me that Unfolded follows a ‘pre-order’ business model, and not all ethical labels use this.

“They’ve done a good job of keeping you informed – you know they didn’t just take your money and run off.” But she thinks they could be even clearer in preparing buyers for delivery time. “The customer values ​​honesty,” says Lowe. “It’s better to say: ‘We are doing well, but that is not yet in order’.” She prefers the approach of small labels that create a handful of inventory, sell those items and then make more.

Lizzie Rivera, founder of ethical lifestyle guide Live Frankly, agrees that seven, almost eight, weeks is “a bit unreasonable.” “We’re not going to change the world if we only appeal to diehard fans of sustainable fashion,” she says. But Rivera sees consumer patience as an essential part of changing the game. “We have to get rid of the habit of thinking: ‘This is what I want tomorrow’. That’s not a fair requirement to set up a small brand; it is an unreasonable expectation.”

To try to understand how we got misguided, I spoke to Unfolded founder Cally Russell. He believes they are clear about the delivery time of four to six weeks, but acknowledges that no matter how they communicate this, some people will not understand it and find it upsetting. He asks why I chose this dress out of all the options, and I pause for a moment. “Probably the price,” I say, thinking back to the other ethical brands I’d looked at but abandoned due to prices over £120.

“Okay, that’s your decision,” he explains. It turns out that it takes a lot of math around fair pay and emissions to create a sustainable label. When Russell started Unfolded, he spoke to 300 shoppers about ethical clothing: what they wanted and what it took to buy it. “One big barrier was, ‘I don’t know where to shop,’” he explains. “The second was that ethical fashion is usually more expensive. Many consumers cannot afford to pay more or are not prepared to do so.”

He asked which people would be willing to compromise if he could lower prices. The main thing was less choice; smaller collections were fine with them. The second was time: shoppers accepted that goods could take longer to receive.

What I hadn’t learned from my seconds-long shopping experience on Instagram was that Unfolded started as a community. Enthusiasts join the brand’s private Facebook group (currently 6,800 members) where they provide creative input to each collection, share photos of purchases and volunteer as models in photo shoots.

Given this ‘tribal feeling’, Russell is surprised that the email updates were a source of irritation. Most customers are fans. “People contact us and say, ‘I had no idea about this.’ They have a new appreciation for the process.”

In addition to running a business with a clear conscience, Russell also wants to educate people about what goes into making a garment. (My “gimme now” consumer brain has clearly killed this level of curiosity.) He apologizes for the longer wait I experienced, but remains steadfast in his approach. “We think this is the right decision. It’s better for the planet, better for the customer and better for the garment worker.”

As for ethical brands with faster delivery, Alison Lowe points me to Pangaia (three to five working days) and the Spanish brand ECOALF (one to three days). I like Fanfare (24 to 48 hours), while Lizzie Rivera favors Rapanui from Isle of Wight and Aya from the US for the basics, as well as another made-to-order label, Lora Gene (two to four weeks). With the exception of Rapanui and Aya, most of the prices are significantly higher than Unfolded, so I’ll take Cally’s stance. We can have feel-good products and fast delivery, but not cheap.

In a way, my peek behind the curtain of one ethical choice is what every consumer needs to shop with clarity. There is no such thing as a simple, affordable and fast product that is also friendly to people and the environment. There are always costs, even if we don’t see them. But if we budget for a few better choices – both in terms of patience and money – we may still be able to turn the tide.