Slow fashion houses embrace made-to-order to reduce waste

Fashion designer and clothier Katelyn Woodburn poses in this undated handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO, Victoria Black

On occasion, fashion designer and clothier Katelyn Woodburn is accused of running a scam.

When a customer makes a purchase without reading the "about" section on her website or following her on social media, they might send an email a week or two later saying something like: "Where's my order? It hasn't even shipped yet? What's going on?" Woodburn recounted from her Vancouver studio.

"Which is a totally reasonable response," she added. Consumers are conditioned to expect instant gratification when it comes to clothes shopping, but that's not really how Woodburn does things.

"I'll say, 'Oh, your shirt is being cut out. We're going to sew it tomorrow.' I tell them the whole process of what's happening. And 100 per cent of the time, I get a response going, 'Oh my gosh, I didn't even realize. This is so cool, no rush at all.'"

Woodburn's company, Street & Saddle, is among the slow fashion houses bucking the broader trend to churn out cheap disposable clothes. Instead of ordering a large production run ahead of each season, they wait for an order before making the garment. They say this allows them to reduce waste, offer a wider size range and cut down on upfront costs.

Woodburn makes clothes that incorporate western flair and English tailoring: button-up shirts with stylized yokes, wide-leg cotton trousers with pleats for ease of movement and riding leggings with knee patches to keep the fabric from wearing through.

Most of her customers are equestrians, she said. The rest just appreciate the esthetic.

When she first opened shop nearly a decade ago, she worked with a local factory to make her garments, she said, but she didn't have the money to order big production runs ahead of time.

By moving to made-to-order and shifting production in-house, "we were able to offer a wider range of styles and sizes and colours without having to invest a huge amount into the pre-production process," she said.

It also enabled her to expand her size range. She sells garments from size XXS, which is a 32-inch bust on her size chart, up to 5X, for a 57-inch bust. She also offers custom sizing.

These days, about two-thirds of her output is made-to-order. She also has wholesale clients — mostly equestrian stores in the United States — that order bigger production runs.

And when she gets an order like that, she and her staff will make a couple extra items that they can sell on their own website.

Jimil Ataman, an anthropologist of sustainable fashion who teaches at the University of Alberta, said the made-to-order model is part of a broader people- and planet-conscious movement that seeks to slow the pace of the fashion industry.

"One of the things I think a lot of slow fashion brands bring to the equation is a deep love of clothes and fashion, and also a genuine interest in building alternative ways of making clothes and selling clothes," said Ataman.

"The designers are motivated by this idea that the contemporary fashion industry is not working. It's producing a lot of harm, the consequences of which are quite staggering if you consider the environmental (impact) and the human rights violations that are just rampant through the supply chain."

A report commissioned by Environment and Climate Change Canada estimated there were 1.3 million tonnes of apparel waste in Canada in 2021. The researchers from ChemInfo Inc. found that of the waste, almost 1.1 million tonnes were trashed and the rest were diverted for reuse or recycling into rags.

There's no silver-bullet for the ills of the fashion industry, Ataman said. Some consumers want or need an item at the last minute and can't wait the two-to-eight weeks required for a made-to-order piece.

But it does have its benefits.

"The made-to-order model does really help these brands who are very attentive to their pre-consumer waste," such as unsold stock, she said.

Ogechukwu Ajibe, who runs the eponymous made-to-order fashion brand Oge Ajibe, said minimizing the waste that's "overpopulating the world" is central to her mission.

"It makes no sense making something that I don't know if people are going to buy...adding to the fabric, the clothing we already have. So it was a practice I started out of sustainability and slow fashion — and also out of not having enough money to go into business," she said.

The Nigerian-Canadian designer operates out of Vancouver, where she makes long-lasting garments with simple, oversized silhouettes, often in bright colours. She prides herself on her pants, which are flowy and highly functional. They've got big pockets, and are designed to fit through weight fluctuations.

Ajibe, whose sizes range from a 31-inch bust to a 61-inch bust, has found people are generally quite willing to wait for their clothes.

What's trickier is price.

She wants people to buy fewer items and make purchases more mindfully: to spend money on garments that will last a long time and can be worn in many different ways.

"If you are going to spend roughly $200 in two months on fast fashion, buying clothes you can only wear once, that's crazy. Why not save that $200 and go buy pants...that will last you three years."

Much of her social media marketing centres on explaining the process of running a business like hers — the work that goes into crafting each garment, from selecting fabrics to designing to cutting to sewing — all of which contributes to the price.

Dirk De Waal, a fashion professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, said that sort of marketing can be powerful because it builds a stronger relationship between the consumer and the product.

"There's a lot of research around 'emotional durability,'" he said. "Like, if you buy something and you have a deep emotional connection to it...you will cherish that item much longer and you would almost care for it better than buying a fast fashion item."

If made-to-order brands can get that buy-in from their customers, it could reduce the amount of garments that people buy and then throw away.

But if customers buy less that means businesses will sell less. Company owners may have to rethink their ultimate goals.

"It's a much larger question around, what does success mean?" De Waal said. "Do we have to scale? What does growth look like? ... Is it enough to have just one store, or do we have to have 50 stores?"

Ajibe doesn't believe in growth for growth's sake. Fast fashion is the past, she said.

"We shouldn't be going backwards; we should be going forwards," she said. "The world needs healing when it comes to air pollution and fabric pollution."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 20, 2024.