The first step to building an ethical wardrobe is determining your why. Why is it important to you to build an ethical wardrobe and what does that mean to you. Take a look here for the other steps to build an ethical wardrobe, when you aren’t sure where to begin.

Building An Ethical Wardrobe: Determine Your Why

Like all values, you have to know why you are making this choice and what it means to you. When building an ethical wardrobe, you need to determine your why.

Why are you doing this? Why is building an ethical wardrobe important to you. When you know your why, it is much easier to go from “Yes, I think I’ll buy this” to “Well… maybe I can find something similar that is made a little more gently.”

Your why will also help you determine what is ethical to you. This will help you define the stores, brands, and individual items that you buy. For years, to me, just made in the USA was enough. My criteria as well as what I know about the fashion industry, has evolved quite a bit through the years. I have more defined and specific guidelines to what is ethical fashion.

If you are confused about ethical fashion, slow fashion, eco-friendly fashion and some of the other terms you’ve heard, take a look here (and don’t worry, it is confusing and not well-defined!)

When you determine your why, you are more able to weigh the options.

Buy the jeans that make your booty look awesome but left gallons of dye in a riverbed or find a pair that look just as good but are made using water-saving, non-polluting technology. Buy the $6 t-shirt that was potentially made by children or women working in an unsafe, unhealthy, low-wage factory or spend a little more and know that your purchase is supporting someone who is making a living wage with health insurance.

So, what is your why?

For some people, it is a vegan wardrobe, for others, it is a more local wardrobe, and for others, it is fair trade or sustainable. You can read about what ethical fashion is to me here, but the short version is that to me, ethical fashion is made sustainably, by people earning a fair wage, by a company with transparent policies working to reduce their own packaging and footprint.

Why? Because to me, our environment is more important than any party dress I could ever own. And, to me, knowing that someone was paid less than minimum wage so I could spend a little less on a blouse makes me feel guilty. I want to know that my clothes and purchase in general are helping (or at least not hurting) those that worked to bring it to me, from the farmer, the dyer, the spinner, the sewer all the way to the warehouse worker, shop girl, and delivery driver.

Do I get it right every time? Not even close.

But, I use my why in most of my purchasing decisions. And being aware of it at the store and while online has prevented a lot of negative-impact buys (and probably saved me a ton of money!).

Determining why you want to build an ethical wardrobe helps to do so because it gives you the criteria you need when deciding what to buy and when. It certainly has for me.

It is also important to determine when you are willing to break your own set of guidelines. I have mentioned that it is difficult for our family to follow my own rules when it comes to kids’ clothes, especially shoes.

If you give yourself some flexibility to learn, make mistakes, and occasionally just decide that something isn’t worth the ethical price tag (financial or otherwise) you are more likely to stay on track most of the time.

So, what is your why? Will you only wear natural fibers? Only shop second hand? Do you love a philanthropic business model? Figure out your why and be clear about your personal ethical style guidelines, and you are well on your way to building an ethical wardrobe.

Building an ethical wardrobe can feel overwhelming. Questions like where to shop and what to buy can make you feel like you aren’t sure where to start. But, it can be made much easier by determining why you want to build an ethical wardrobe, committing to it, and then realizing that the most ethical clothes are the ones you already own. Cherish them, take care of them, and wear them many, many times and you’ve already built an ethical wardrobe!