5 of Our Favorite Men’s Eco Fashion Brands
Sometimes fashion brands seem to be geared towards women, and men can feel a little left out. This problem becomes especially acute when you start looking at specialty fashion and smaller brands that might think it’s just safer financially to focus on women. At Rust and Frey, we like to make an equal mix of bags geared towards men, towards women, and bags that’d go with anyone, but in the spirit of helping to balance out the eco-fashion blogosphere, we’d like to give a quick shout out to some great men’s eco and ethical fashion companies.
No Nasties
No Nasties is a good company to start with as they have a pretty nice selection and a very clear mission. Their goal is to promote clothing made from organic cotton grown with sustainable fashion. Now, just due to how water greedy cotton is, we do believe that Upcycled cotton is always better than growing new cotton, but one of the things we greatly appreciate about No Nasties is that they are also focused on fair trade cotton in India, which is especially important given the farming crisis going on there. Plus, they’ve got funny T-Shirts
Conscious Step
Conscious Step offers something we all need: fun socks. They also happen to be sustainable and support great causes while they’re at it. When searching through their collection, you may be tempted to buy a sock based off of what colors they are, like how most people buy socks. But you also can also choose to buy socks based on what causes they support, as a portion of each pair purchased goes towards supporting a cause, ranging from saving the rainforest to buying books for the underprivileged. Basically through Conscious Step you are donating to different causes and get a free pair of fun, organic, fair trade socks for your trouble. A win win scenario, we think.
Knowledge Apparel
Knowledge Apparel is a men’s fashion specialist with a large selection of outfits and a wide variety of sustainable and ethical manufacturing methods. Organic cotton, recycled plastics, mulesing-free wool (if you don’t know why that’s important, find out here), tensel, and others, they work with whichever methods are available to help create sustainable production. You can purchase everything there from business attire to casual wear, all done in classic, timeless looks. If you want to venture away from standards looks though, there’s always the next on the list.
Older Brother
Older Brother blends the world of sustainability and men’s designer fashion. They use all natural dyes, transparent manufacturing processes, locally grown organic cotton, and a mix of other natural fibers to make 100% biodegradable and ethically produced slow fashion clothing. The designs themselves are made to be these in between casual and formal looks for a chic and interesting yet still restrained fashion sense. Of note, their clothes is designed and tailored for men, for women, and for everyone in-between, and they encourage dressing how you want. And if that interests you, you’ll love our next company...
Literally every other Eco Fashion company because it’s the 21st century.
We’re nearly two decades into the 21st century, and women have been wearing pants for basically the entirety of the 20th century. While there are still some struggles, such as with short hair, it’s generally widely accepted that women can dress in men’s clothing. Yet men dressing in women’s clothing is still seen as wrong for some reason. Guesses for these reasons include homophobia, a clothing industry that aggressively separates men’s and women’s sections as a marketing strategy, or an ingrained sexism in our culture that sees feminine characteristics and dress as a downgrade. But whatever the reason or whatever mixture of reasons, they’re old hat, dress as you want. If you want to rock one of those Reformation sustainable dresses, or strut on some vegan heels from Matt and Nat, just get a feminine sizing guide for men and do your thing. As for bags, we think our Frida Tote looks especially good. Go forth and do you.