Why we don't call ourselves ethical.
Thoughts from Averie - co-founder of Casa Flor Designs: The over-thinker - here are some thoughts on a ‘hot topic’ within the Sustainable Fashion realm.
When we first started Casa Flor (back in 2016) we were young babies who had good intentions, but if we’re being honest, we really didn’t know what we were doing….Four years later, we’ve learned a lot and want to share with you what we have learned and what keeps us going.
There are some words that we tend to avoid when we describe our business. A big one is the word “Ethical.” Shocked? Well, let me explain…
We think it’s pretty bold to declare oneself “ethical”. What does it even mean to be ethical? As an idealist, I left college hoping to start a 100% ethical fashion brand. To me, that meant that every person in our supply chain was treated with dignity and that we didn’t destroy the environment in the process.
It wasn’t until I embarked on this journey that I learned how incredibly complex globalized supply chains really are. It took us a while to even question where the cotton threads came from that the artisans use to produce our textiles. They buy them from a variety of middle men and thread sourcing can be difficult to track down - not to mention where the actual cotton fiber originated from. This was pretty problematic for us considering how exploitive cotton production can be. (Learn more about the cotton industry here).
Until we can be 100% confident in the ethical treatment of every single person in our supply chain, we can not claim the title of an ‘ethical company’. This is one area we are working toward, and our first subject to tackle is cotton fiber sourcing. We are currently developing a strategic plan to implement 100% organic and fair trade certified cotton threads to our production by 2025.
The second smack in the face when we started our business, was that there is a very small market who can afford 100% handwoven, naturally dyed garments. At the time we didn’t have access to that market - nor the slightest clue how to sell a $500 garment. How could we try to sell a garment to our peers who are passionate about ethical fashion but can’t afford it. How can we try to sell a garment that WE can’t even afford?!
We did some deep self reflections and chose to focus on the people in our company first. That doesn’t mean that the environment is any less important to us, but we realized that with our start up capital, we had to choose one path to tackle first, and come back to the other when we had the resources. Reason number two why we removed “ethical” from our vocabulary was to allow us time to develop our sustainability plan to eliminate synthetic dyes from our production.
This brings us to the focus of this year’s holiday collection - all of the garments we are offering are made using 100% natural dyes. Each year we will strive to add more natural dye colors to our catalog for our wholesale clients in an effort to transition our entire production to only naturally dyed threads. We will be releasing our 5 year sustainability plan later this year and are excited to share more on this in the future.
The point of this blog is to share with you that we will never stop trying to do better, and we encourage everyone in our community to do the same. Keep learning and keep challenging each other. We would love to hear from you if you have any thoughts on this blog, post your comments below!