Have you already seen the documentary 'The True Cost of Fashion' on Netflix?
This documentary, produced by Andrew Morgan is one of the documentaries that made many people switch from fast fashion to sustainable fashion. Do you know where your clothing comes from and how it has been produced?
Many of these questions are answered in this documentary, there are no perfect solutions to the unethical practices of fast fashion yet. However there are many independent brands doing the best they can to be transparent about their production processes and fabrics. Before you purchase from any brand it is important to do your research and ask question. Or even ask the brand those questions.
At Noumenon we aim to be as transparent as possible when customers ask us questions. We produce in a small factory in Lithuania (Eastern-Europe) and produce in small batches. The factory is being visited on a regular basis and the women get paid an European fair wage according to the countries' standards. The fact that the women get paid a fair amount, results into higher costs for our garments.
Many customers ask us why the prices are 'high' or in other words not as cheap as fast fashion. Well, because only the creating of a pattern for a new design is around €10-15 euros, then on top of that you have the sample making (depending on the style) is between €40-60, for coats and long styles it is even higher, then there are costs of CMT (cut, make, trim), and then production costs (based on quantities, the lower the quantities, the higher the costs). Besides that, we have to also pay ourselves here at the studio, pay for shipping, website maintenance costs, design and of course we need to pay rent just as you do. The costs just build up because all workers in our company are being paid properly, and many people find this too much. When actually this is a fairest price we could imagine. And we don't even pay a high margin to ourselves, because we want to make sustainable fashion as accessible as possible to you guys. Changing the world comes with sacrifices, especially at the start, when a brand is in a start-up phase!
It is just almost impossible to create a fairly made garment for fast fashion prices. However it seems that the customers want the best quality, fairly made and for the lowest price possible. One thing to be remembered is that, good things cost something.
This was just a short introduction of our transparency, in the near future we are working and thinking of ways how to communicate this to you in the best possible manner and take you with us to show our daily practices. In house, but also at our factories. We will keep you posted! For now you can watch The True Cost of Fashion and educate yourself more on this topic.
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