For instance… what do you know about the retail price of a fashion item? Do you think that it always tells you the entire story behind the cost of production? Well no it doesn’t… but as Maria Malo mentioned in her blog post:
you can make some pretty safe assumptions about the costs that would’ve been covered in the process:
- The wage of the person who made it
- The upkeep of the workplace it was produced in
- The quality of the fabric used to make it
- The production techniques
- The circumstances under which the raw materials were sourced (and before that, grown)
Ethical clothing is typically produced and sold with an eye for improving all of the above. It aims to pay a fair living wage to the men and women (note: not children!) that produced the items; to ensure that the working conditions for those on the production end are fair, healthy, and safe; and to find materials that are as kind to the earth as they are to the farmers that produced them.