A decade or so ago, pairing Everlane kick-crop jeans with the brand’s almond-toe Modern Loafer and a crewneck sweater was a quintessential Millennial city-girl uniform: minimalist, boring, and, most important, vaguely ethical. The San Francisco–based fashion start-up was founded in the early 2010s on the premise of “radical transparency.” It told consumers about the factory where their shirt was made and the cost to produce it, down to the labor and markup, which it said was a fraction of the markup of other retailers. It was a brand built on the belief that globalization could work for everyone, and that anybody could shop with their values.
But now Everlane is in bad shape. It’s $90 million in debt, behind on rent, and facing eviction at its headquarters. This week, Puck reported that the company has found a buyer that seems antithetical to the values it once said it held: Shein, the online fast-fashion behemoth synonymous with overconsumption and workplace abuses such as child labor. Shein, in response to allegations of poor conditions over the years, has made efforts to address critics, such as investing in carbon-reducing initiatives or ending orders at factories that have known problems. Still, the era of sustainable fashion that Everlane represents seems to be fading—as does the concept that ethical consumerism alone can eliminate the clothing industry’s worst practices. (Everlane declined to comment on reports of the sale, and Shein did not immediately respond to an interview request.)
Everlane was once a high-flying poster child of investor-backed sustainable-apparel companies. Venture-capital firms and private-equity investors poured millions into the business, helping turn it into a fast-growing direct-to-consumer brand. It was part of a cohort of buzzy companies that promised to ensure better working conditions and make products using more eco-friendly materials. Reformation, known for feminine dresses, launched in 2009 and pledged to make clothes from leftover fabrics and pay its workers a living wages. It was followed by Everlane, and in 2016 the footwear brand Allbirds, which sold merino-wool sneakers that claimed a lower carbon footprint than a typical running shoe and attracted celebrity investors, including Leonardo DiCaprio. The trifecta of brands gave sustainable fashion a palpable feeling of traction.
[Read: Fast fashion’s end has been greatly exaggerated]
As eco-friendly fashion started to boom, other brands sought to cash in, and so-called greenwashing became a problem in the fashion industry at large. Fast-fashion companies and luxury brands alike have been accused of misleading consumers. In 2022, H&M faced litigation for using dubious sustainability data. Last summer, Armani was fined $4 million for claiming to be sustainable while outsourcing some of its leather-goods production to sweatshops near Milan. Even Everlane, which watchdog groups consider to have good production practices, had blind spots. During the Black Lives Matter movement of 2020, former and current employees criticized the company of anti-Black racism and union busting. Reformation’s founder was ousted following similar accusations at around the same time.
All of these companies have made efforts to regain consumer trust: H&M fought the litigation against it, and the case was dismissed; the company now claims that some 90 percent of its products are made from more sustainable materials. Armani denied the labor-abuse claims and said it planned to appeal. Everlane’s founder apologized and then was replaced amid a broader restructuring. And a third-party investigator ultimately dismissed the allegations at Reformation. But consumer cynicism seems to have spread anyway, and the allegations have added to a sense that even supposedly ethical brands can’t be trusted.
Some might argue that inflation was the death knell of sustainable fashion. It simply costs more to pay workers fairly, to use organic cotton instead of polyester, and to make a modest amount of clothing instead of a glut that ends up burning in Chilean deserts or washed up on the Ghanaian shoreline. Consumer prices are up about a staggering 25 percent since 2020. Far fewer people can afford to be green. Last month, Allbirds announced that it’s moving away from footwear and experimenting with being an AI company. Mara Hoffman, a luxury sustainable line, shuttered two years ago.
But the Everlane sale seems to underscore how shallow the movement for sustainable fashion was all along: A few companies, on their own, were never going to be enough for substantial change in ethical fashion. Although Everlane was part of a nascent shift of buying better by buying less, American consumerism ultimately prevailed; per-capita clothing consumption has only risen in recent years. Reformation, for instance, has mostly rebounded from its earlier scandals, but it has largely focused on fresh design rather than bland sneakers and button-downs that were easily copied. Its clothes, for the most part, are based on trends to meet shoppers’ latest desires.
[Read: The mysterious, meteoric rise of Shein]
What sustainable fashion desperately needed and never got was an even playing field: standards, in other words, that clothing companies of all kinds would have to meet, such as a legally shared definition of sustainability, or requirements for labor transparency. Without them, brands that tried to genuinely invest in better-made clothes were constantly being undercut—not just by the Sheins of the world but also by other brands with vaguely ethical credentials. The relative newcomer Quince, which launched in 2018 and rebranded in 2020, touts sustainability credentials and makes products similar to Everlane’s and higher-end companies such as Loewe or Toteme, but at lower prices. Instead of traditional production methods, Quince uses a business model similar to Shein’s, where it produces in small batches and ships products from factories directly to consumers. According to some consumer-watchdog groups, there is scant evidence to back up many of Quince’s sustainability claims. (Quince has said in response to past accusations that it is committed to sustainability, and that answering more questions about its sourcing would divulge competitive advantages.)
If policy makers had passed laws to clearly define what counts as a sustainable textile and forced all brands to reveal information about their factories and wages, responsible companies could compete in earnest. But now whatever momentum existed for robust legislation to clean up fashion is largely gone. Recent political trends in the United States and the European Union have meant that most legislation associated with the environment has been weakened or is not moving forward. Last year, corporations pushed to change a landmark EU corporate-sustainability law that would have required more transparency and ethics in fashion; human-rights advocates say that what’s left “is a skeleton” of its previous form.
The Everlane playbook lulled many shoppers into thinking the market was fixing itself and turned sustainability into a niche consumer product for those who could afford it. But the half truths and performative claims from the larger fashion industry may have ultimately crushed a lot of people’s faith that the field can do better.
This death of optimism may have contributed to Everlane’s downfall as much as anything else. Many of the upwardly mobile Millennials who once spent freely on ethical basics have abandoned all sorts of brands that used to symbolize thoughtful buying. Meanwhile, Shein’s rise may have cratered any beliefs that fast fashion could be contained—that spending more on those utilitarian, eco-friendly basics would lead to meaningful change. If people must live in a world where companies’ ethical claims are so often questionable, where money is tight, and where even a so-called responsible company will eventually sell to a fast-fashion giant, some may think that, at the very least, they might as well wear a fun print.
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