I am sentimental about Everlane!

I won’t pretend like I know everything that’s going on, or the back-end justifications for allowing a brand like Shein to buy out a brand like Everlane. This won’t be a deep dive into the corporate mechanics leading up to this Great Industry Tragedy. You can read other excellent Substack essays on that here and here and here.

All I know is that whatever happened is business, and rarely (never?) has business ever prioritized sustainability over profit. Idealized brand sustainability as a standalone is not a strong enough differentiator to sustain the long-term financial game, even disguised aesthetically as “clean”, or “timeless”, or “ethical”,. It may scream cool or trendy for a period, but trends are cyclic. And what’s cool doesn’t always prevail through and above the bottom line. That’s the harsh reality that every single person in sustainable fashion is up against, and every single person knows that when they sign up for work in this industry.

As hot of a take as it might be, especially coming from me, I don’t think Everlane is a sham. I think for an apparel brand, Everlane maintained good, above-average intentions. I don’t think that selling to Shein was part of a grander, malicious plan to fool everyone; I just think it was a last-ditch act of desperation to stay afloat. A lucrative offer is hard to resist, regardless of who offers it.

I imagine the desperation the brand had to be in to take a buy-out from Shein. If that isn’t a bleak indicator of the state of this industry right now, I’m not sure what is (maybe Allbirds turning into an AI company…).

Most of the commentary I’ve seen on this topic hinges on outrage and incredulity. I get why people are shocked and maybe even angry. It’s yet another kick in the gut while we’re down (feels like the industry has been down for a while). Our naivety in holding out hope that a brand stays committed to an admirable legacy has again been exposed.

This isn’t merely an Everlane failure. This is a systemic failure… shocker. Profit outperforms environmentalism, and until the industry fundamentally switches how they measure success over time, sustainability will never be enough.

To me, though, it’s most upsetting to think about how the employees will be affected. Employees who were dedicated to working for a company with assumed aligned values, at least in some regard.

The employees who were doing the hard work behind the eco labels and transparency claims, cranking out yearly impact reports, trying to meet consumer expectations, and live out their widely broadcasted ethos as truthfully as possible. Employees who probably felt a sense of pride to work for a reputable brand. Whether the sustainability work was “good enough” or not, I know it was championed by genuine people who held genuine values for this type of work, and being a brand that does something rather than nothing.

We outsiders feel disappointed. I can only imagine the INSIDER’s disappointment, along with a likely looming sense of unease. A big new company taking ownership will most likely result in a big new restructuring that omits or downsizes certain teams.

People love to use this turn of events as an opportunity to bash the brand and say that they were never even “clean” in the first place. Of course, no brand is 100% pure and clean!! But Everlane was a brand that spoke boldly about transparency, ethical work conditions, and clean materials, way before those initiatives were the intensely scrutinized ‘norm’ that it is today. They were not just aspirational sustainability add-ons to meet growing demand; they were foundational values to the brand’s identity. They were integrated into their pillars for YEARS before most brands even began to think about sustainability. So I can imagine that the employees who sought out a desirable role at the brand shared some of those core values and were excited to contribute to something meaningful. And now for that to be thrown back in their faces by the giant hands of Shein, I can only imagine, is incredibly, incredibly disappointing.

All of this to say, I have an undeniable soft spot for Everlane. Everlane was my introduction to sustainable fashion just a few years ago! I was a baby grad student with a dream to help the environment, but an unclear path of where I wanted to focus my efforts. That was my entire reasoning for spending 2 years and many tens of thousands of dollars on MORE school, to focus on my broadly encompassing passion for environmentalism.

Did I want to restore ecosystems and spend my days in field work? Did I want to help designate MPAs off the coast of California? Did I want to wear goofy waders every day and slosh through wetlands and rivers? Did I want to work in policy and fight boots on the ground for pro-environmental legislation? To all of those, not really. None of that felt like me.

Then came the crux of my grad program: our two-year-long master’s capstone project. Where we students would work in groups and partner with a real-world client to solve a real sustainability problem in that client’s company.

Basically, the process was that a team from a nearby company could reach out to my school with interest, and find one or two students who were interested in working with them to write a project proposal. That, or if a student had a particular company they’re dying to do their capstone with, they could initiate the pitch. I was never planning on initiating anything myself. I had no idea what project I’d possibly be interested in. But, one of my professors at the time had sent out a message to our class that an apparel brand was interested in submitting a capstone proposal, and gauging if anyone would be interested in writing the proposal. I happened to be working on another unrelated project about the fashion industry, but hadn’t yet decided that I wanted it to be my primary focus in graduate school. Because there was that clear overlap, though, my professor asked me if I’d be interested in writing a proposal for this apparel brand. Another one of my classmates and I were vaguely curious, so we wrote it together.

That brand, as I’m sure you guessed it, was Everlane.

I knew nothing about Everlane prior. A SF-based company, and relatively small, I remember thinking damn I really need to do some research on them before I write a whole proposal! And research I did! At least research about their pillars of sustainability, the goals they had set, and the goals they had reached, and throughout all this research, I quickly came to understand the role and reputation Everlane carried as an industry leader for sustainability.

That, I could get behind. I definitely couldn’t afford to consistently shop for their clothes at the time, as a broke and in-debt grad student, but I could respect them and feel good about working on this “never before done” water-focused sustainability project. Through writing the proposal and working with the sustainability team, the type of brand that Everlane was became elucidated even more. A small, but mighty team of 2, the amount of hard work they had already done up until that point was baffling. Multiple annually published Impact Reports (if you’ve never seen one before, they range between around 20 and 100 pages, not light work), increasing visibility into its supply chain, switching to lower impact, but likely higher cost, materials more and more each year. None of that is simple or fast or easy for a big team, let alone a team of TWO.

Sooo many brands don’t even publish annual reports. Sooo many brands will never know who their suppliers are beyond Tier 1. Everlane truly was setting a standard and I’d say they were pretty radical.

Not to mention, working with the team was, and I don’t say this lightly, the single most impactful precursor to starting my dream career. It was because of Everlane and the opportunity to work with them that I got to glimpse into a REAL fashion brand, understand how chaotically complex apparel supply chains are, and get exposed to how freaking HARD it is to do this work. IT sealed me with nothing but respect for them and people in other brands, who do that work internally. Respect, and so much admiration that channeled into a clear focus for my career path: Sustainable fashion. That was how I was going to make my impact. An industry whose natural function is the antithesis of sustainability, I was galvanized by the challenge to dent the status quo.

I ended up being their summer intern between school years to continue on the research and analysis needed for our project. At the very end of the 2 years, my group and I presented with beaming pride our final results, and submitted a 100-page academic-style report that reflected the fervor we poured into our project with Everlane. My group even got an entire page dedicated to our water footprint project results that was featured in their annual report.

It was because of Everlane that I even had relevant experience to kick-start my path in this industry. Everyone who has ever been a fresh graduate knows the biggest frustration is the lack of experience while trying to land a first job. But because I had 2 years of Everlane shining as the North Star on my resume, I had some sort of edge. Seriously, nothing else on my resume compared to the impression working with Everlane had. I milked the heck out of it, too. It was a flex I never hesitated to flex.

I had such a genuine thrill just to be a part of it. And so did the rest of my group. We all grew in our own way a more personal affinity for sustainable fashion, and we were all seriously on fire for Everlane, and on fire for turning something as beautiful as fashion into something kinder for the planet.

Anyways, this is a 100% off-the-cuff ramble. Shein buying out Everlane is a sentence I never thought I’d string together in typed words. Yet here we are. I’m not channeling anger so much as I am channeling sentimentality.

As a budding, eager career seeker with a profound conviction to do right for the world, but unsure and overwhelmed about what that path could look like, Everlane was everything in the moment to me.

As a final thank you for completing the project with them, the team gifted us with Everlane credit to purchase from their site. It was my first Everlane purchase. I bought the cult-favorite oversized boxy shirt made of Tencel Lyocell in cream. It’s a great shirt - buttery smooth, perfectly oversized, and a basic timeless one if there ever was one.

I guess now Everlane’s timelessness will actually need to stand the test of time as their good-quality products, like that boxy shirt, eventually become a thing of the past.

Vintage Everlane? I’m sure it will be cool, I’ll be buying!!