We think it’s fair to say that we’d all like our wardrobes to be a more sustainable place, but aside from vintage, a lot of people are under the impression that eco-friendly fashion comes with a not-so-friendly price tag. If you were to look at some ethical brands, such as Mother of Pearl and Mara Hoffman, as gorgeous as they are, that would indeed be the case. However, there’s a new wave of more affordable conscious brands emerging that are making it easier for those of us with less-than-flush bank accounts to change the way we shop.
The word “affordable,” however, is difficult to cookie-cut and is completely dependant on individual circumstances. One blatantly clear thing is that the pieces, which you’ll find via the brands we’ve handpicked below, will never appear “affordable” when you compare them to their high street counterparts—the retail giants that can (and do) sell dresses for £15 and coats for £25. Instead, we need to change our shopping mindsets.
The first stepping stone to making your wardrobe more considered is to spend less frivolously. By cutting back on items bought a whim (which, let’s face it, you’ll likely only wear a handful of times before relegating them to the back of your closet instead of investing in high-quality, timeless pieces that you’ll wear for years to come), you’ll find these pieces to be significantly more “affordable” in the long run.
With this in mind, keep scrolling to see our edit of some of our favourite affordable sustainable brands—a list we plan on updating on the regular when we discover more labels of the same sustainable ilk.