The Worst Brands For Sweatshop Labour

Want to know about some of the worst brands for sweatshop labour? Read on!

By Jody McCutcheon

Why do we love our favourite fashion brands? Is it because we believe they look or feel good on us? Because various targets of our admiration wear them? Price point? Or simply because they’re all the rage?

It’s important that we contemplate the reasons we’re drawn to the garb we wear. Because clothing is more than just practical – we often like to think of the garments we wear as manifestoes of our individuality. Yet the impact of the brands we support with our dollar votes resonates beyond our personal lives. Perhaps the biggest impacts of our preferred outfits are felt by the environment and those who produce the clothes in company factories.

In this light, then, it makes sense that our fashion choices should be about more than just us, the consumer.

Think About More Than Style

You’ve tried on a dress. It looked good! You considered the price. You considered the practicality. But did you also wonder if it was made by one of the worst brands for sweatshop labour?

The sad reality is that many of us don’t even know which clothing manufactures are the best and worst when it comes to using slave-like labour. But in all likelihood many of your favourite brands are probably quite nasty. This could be because they employ sweatshop labour, or because they don’t care much about the environmental impact of their products, for example.

And we get it. Navigating fashion brands can be tough. Yet today, well-considered fashion choices are increasingly crucial. Mainly because we’re buying more clothes than ever. According to Greenpeace, despite more global acknowledgement of the human rights and environmental problems related to fast fashion, clothing sales rose 80% from 2002 to 2015, from $1 trillion to $1.8 trillion. And those numbers continue to grow as developing-world fashion shoppers gradually catch up to first-world fashion consumers.

Whilst some may laud this as economic development in action, the fact is that greater demand for clothing means more demand for garment workers. Higher demand for workers should lead to them being able to demand higher prices, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Increased Demand, Increased Issues

In general, increased demand for clothing means sweatshops continue to operate worldwide, and the sweatshop scandals of the 1990’s are far from behind us.

From Bangladesh, site of the 2013 Rana Plaza fire that killed over 1,100 clothing workers, to Changshu, China; from Los Angeles to Istanbul, Turkey; from Honduras to Indonesia, clothing factories around the world tend to have terrible human rights records.

Clothing workers are at the mercy of ruthless employers who subject their employees to long working hours and low wages, while discouraging the creation of unions that protect workers from mistreatment.

And it’s getting increasingly political, too. For example, the Chinese are using the Uyghur population that they’ve brutally persecuted for slave labour. They make not only clothing, but also ‘eco friendly’ solar panels. And controversially, in the USA, corporations use prison labour to create their garments. The prisons receive a percentage of the profits from these arrangements, which, of course, gives them more incentives to throw more people in the can.

How To Avoid Exploitative Brands 

1. Use An App

Good On You is the world’s leading source and app for rating fashion brands’ ethics. They have currently rated thousands of fashion brands from Hugo Boss, G-Star, H&M, Tommy Hilfiger, Eileen Fisher and more, rating them on a scale from ‘Not Good Enough’ to ‘Great’ depending on the brand’s sustainability efforts. The app tells you such information as:

• a brand’s policies towards labour
• how much packaging they use
• whether they use animal products, and how they source them

In short, it’s a great way to learn all about the best and worst brands for sweatshop labour.

2. Read A Report or Two

Baptist World Aid compiles an annual report that gives fashion brands a grade from A to F depending on  the strength of companies’ labour rights management systems to mitigate the risk of exploitation in their supply chain. 78% of the companies assessed directly engaged in the research process.

Another great site comes from, unsurprisingly perhaps, Fashion Revolution. Their Transparency Tracker  ranks 40 of the biggest global fashion companies according to their level of transparency based on a questionnaire and publicly available information about supply chain issues.

3. Know The Worst Brands For Slave Labour

Vote with your wallet and avoid the worst fashion brands for sweatshop labour.

According to several reports such as this, this and this, these brands include:

• Victoria’s Secret
• La Senza
• Claire’s Accessories
• Monsoon Accessorize
• Abercrombie & Fitch
• Hollister
• Forever 21
• Disney
• Coco Beach
• Asphalt
• Joe Fresh
• Carrefour
• Matalan
• Benetton

4. Beware your sources

With increasing numbers of mainstream magazines now covering the growing trend for sustainable fashion and beauty, it can be confusing. Publications such as Vogue, Bustle, and Marie Claire sometimes cover ethical fashion. And this leads consumers to believe that everything they cover is ethical – which is far, far from reality. If you’re looking for brands that produce fashion ethically, stick to blogs and magazines like Eluxe. We won’t cover anything BUT ethical fashion!

5. Follow The Leaders

Let’s look on the positive side: there are lots of brands working to achieve sustainability by using renewable energy in their factories; reducing water and chemical usage; developing and implementing new, input-reducing materials and manufacturing processes; improving the durability of their products, and by treating workers right. This means better wages, shorter working days, accessible skills training, and allowing the formation of unions to protect workers’ human rights.

For example, Patagonia, makers of outdoor and hiking gear, encourages shoppers to not be wasteful and buy only items they need, while also offering to mend older items to make them last longer. While it may eat into the company’s bottom line, this is exactly the type of neo-commercial mindset the planet needs–not the wasteful, fast-food mentality behind fast-fashion.

Other brands working hard to make a difference include:

• People Tree
• Raven + Lily
• Mata Traders
• &Daughter
• Waimari
• Ninety Percent
• Johanna Ortiz
• Kowtow Clothing

The brands mentioned above ensure that their workers are all fairly paid and supported in other ways, too. For example, they may have their children’s education supported, their local artisan traditions preserved, or they may provide daycare.

Conclusions

It’s great to have favourite fashion brands, preferred clothing we can slip into that makes us look and feel good. But it’s time to really consider the reasons we love them, and to love them for solid reasons–preferably ones that don’t revolve around fashion zeitgeists or everyday low prices. The best reasons to love the clothes we wear are because they do less harm to our planet and  fellow citizens.

Do you know of any other brands that are the absolute worst for sweatshop labour? Tell us in the comments! We’d love to hear from you!

All images: Ninety Percent