One of the questions I get asked the most often by both friends and followers is:

“What are some good sustainable fashion brands for ~ insert clothing item here ~ ?”

I truly love that some people see my account as a place to go for advice and education around slow fashion and more sustainable fashion brands, but in all honesty I don’t know very many sustainable clothing brands off the top of my head!

Investing in newly created slow fashion items is particularly expensive for those on a tight budget (myself included) so out of necessity it’s often the case that most people that are interested in sustainable fashion don’t actually know many sustainable fashion brands. However, my not so secret recommendation is to use a sustainable fashion directory to find some!

What is a sustainable fashion brand directory?

A sustainable fashion brand directory is a collection of different fashion brands that have been evaluated for how sustainable their business and products are. Usually it’s a company or organisation that carries out their own investigation in key areas. Each fashion brand is given a score for sustainability and you can search through the directory to discover the more sustainable options for clothing.

I personally have 3 recommendations of fashion brand directories which I go through below!

Good on You Directory

Good on You hosts a directory of almost 3,000 brands with the ability to find less known and popular brands through search, categories and staff picks. You can access this directory through both their website and their app so you can search up brands on the go. It’s the directory I recommend the most often because of a simple interface and just how many brands they’ve rated.

Their sustainability rating is comprised of 3 parts: people, planet and animals. Each of these aspects is given a score out of 5 (with 5 being the best) with an overall rating from We Avoid at worst to Great at best given to each brand.

The summary rating for each brand looks like this.

You will most likely be unsurprised that Good on You gives Shein a rating of We Avoid with low scores across the 3 sustainability categories.

Good on You does a more in-depth breakdown of what their investigation found for each brand further down the page for each brand in its directory. Each of the above categories has a paragraph or two summarising the brand’s score without overwhelming you with information.

You can also see summary stats and info along the side including:

Good on You’s Rating
Product price range ($ to $$$$)
Location of the business
Where you can purchase their products
Categories of their products
Where they ship
The brand’s values
Any certifications the brand has

Overall I’ve found this to be a really good resource with more brands being added regularly. Good on You do partner with some of the brands they rate and promote products and sales both on their website and on their socials .e.g Instagram.

You can read more about how Good on You carries out their evaluations and what their ratings mean in more detail as wll as take a look at their FAQs on their website.

Remake’s Brand Directory

Remake is a non-profit organisation that works towards fair pay and climate justice globally through education and advocacy. I’m one of their Ambassadors!

Remake’s brand directory includes 92 brands at the time of writing which you can look through using search, filters for company size, garment type, and other tags such as Affordable, Rental and Woman-Owned. You can access this directory through their website - and scroll through their other work while you’re at it.

Their sustainability rating is a score out of 150 with 8 different components. You can access each brand’s scorecard to see exactly how this was calculated.

The above scoring is for Abercrombie and Fitch who accumulated 2 out of a possible 150 points 👎

Remake summarises their findings in around 250 words per brand with an overview of any changes (or lack thereof) over time.

An interesting feature is highlighting any active campaigns aimed at getting the brand to make a change. Remake works on a range of campaigns acentred around working rights for garment workers and fair pay. This is a simple way for you to get involved and show your support!

The International Accord is an active campaign for several brands.

While Remake’s brand directory is the smallest of the group, the breakdown for each sustainability score is fairly in-depth with discussion sharing changes over time. A lot of well known brands are included so it’s definitely a good starting place for more research.

B Corp Directory

B Lab is the company behind the B Corp certification. Their website has a directory of all 200+ apparel companies that are a certified B Corp. There are more than 6,000 B Corps across all sectors at the time of writing so this could be useful for you if you’re looking for products and services outside of fashion too!

What is a B Corp?

A B Corp is a business that has been certified to hold high standards for sustainability. They must demonstrate high social and environmental performance, change their governance so all stakeholders are accountable, and be transparent with their information by sharing it on their B Corp profile. The business much achieve a score of 80 or more in the B Corp assessment and pass a risk review among other criteria.

B Lab assesses businesses across the world and certified B Corps are brands that act exceptionally well to act sustainably. These businesses are by no means “perfect” but this certification is a good indicator.

The B Corp assessment covers 5 key areas with each brand page showing the score the brand received, the minimum score for B Corp certification, and the median score for a typical business. Each of the 5 areas has a description of its impact with the scoring of different components.

This score is for Stand4 Socks - see their page for more details.

This directory is less geared towards getting you to shop with the businesses than Good on You so there isn’t much immediately visible info about pricing and availability.

This summary information is again for Stand4 socks and you can see the full page for more details.

The main info at a glance is more around where the business operates but you can see their website and when they were certified as a B Corp.

The rigorous requirements for becoming a certified B Corp means I have some trust in this platform for identifying brands that are more sustainable options. This isn’t the website for finding out how unsustainable popular brands are so use this specifically for identifying new brands to investigate.

Closing Thoughts

Hopefully through reading or skimming this post you will have found one or more new platforms for discovering new sustainable options for clothing. No single platform is going to cover every brand that exists or meet every need in terms of what information they provide, but these 3 organisations are doing a lot for making slow fashion more visible.

If the more sustainable options are currently out of your budget then remember that repairing, upcycling, renting, secondhand shopping, and swapping clothes are all options that also count towards slow fashion!