Do you know the true cost and value of your wardrobe? I don’t mean what it’s worth to you. I’m not talking about how sentimental each item is to you either. I’m talking about the true cost in terms of labour, resources and everything that goes into making the clothes we wear.
When I started my sustainable wardrobe journey, I certainly didn’t know a lot about fast fashion. It didn’t even occur to me to think about the true cost of a garment, how it was made, where, or by whom.
For years, much of the conversation around the true cost of fashion has focused on cheap clothes, fast fashion and the high street. That conversation remains important, but there is another part of the fashion industry that deserves the same scrutiny.
Luxury. Paying more for a garment doesn’t automatically mean the person who made it was paid more, that the materials are better, or that the garment has been made with the level of craftsmanship the price tag suggests. The true cost of fashion isn’t only a question for people shopping at the cheapest end of the market.
What Does the True Cost Actually Mean?
When I talk about the true cost, I’m not talking about what we pay at the checkout for the garment. The price tells us what the consumer is being charged, but it doesn’t tell us how that money is distributed throughout the supply chain, what the workers are paid, what materials have been used or what environmental costs sit elsewhere.
Somewhere along the lines, we’ve lost sight of and understanding of how our clothes are made and by whom. The out-of-sight mentality has enabled us to shop without a second thought. All we see is the final product hanging up in store, ready for us to simply buy and wear.
The true cost is a breakdown of what labour and resources go into making a product – it includes all the things we don’t see. There are many stages involved in making a garment, involving natural resources, labour, time and skill. The price we see only tells us what the customer has paid. It doesn’t tell us what happened before the garment reached the shop.
For years, the focus has been on how cheap clothes can be. The more interesting question now is what happens when clothes are expensive.
The Introduction of Cheap Clothes aka Fast-Fashion
The introduction of fast fashion brands in the 1990s paved the way for cheaper clothes. The original high-street brands such as H&M, Forever 21 and Zara helped create a model based around trendy, affordable clothing and faster turnaround from fashion trends to products in store.
Fast fashion has focused on rapid production, lower-cost manufacturing and frequent turnover of inventory. The increase in volume has created enormous pressure across the fashion supply chain, from raw materials through to the factories producing garments and the people working in them. The environmental and social consequences of that model are now much better understood.
The Introduction of Even Cheaper and Disposable Fashion – aka Ultra-Fast-Fashion
Ultra-fast fashion took this model further, using online retail, social media, data and extremely rapid product cycles to put huge numbers of new products in front of consumers. The difference between fast fashion and ultra-fast fashion is largely one of speed, volume and the way technology is used to respond to demand. The result is a fashion system where newness is constant and the distance between seeing something and buying it can be almost nothing.
The Hidden Costs of Our Clothes
The hidden costs of fashion are not only about what happens to the person buying a £10 dress. They can involve the farmers producing fibres, the people processing those materials, the factories making the garments, the people sewing them, those transporting them and the communities living with the environmental consequences of production.
For many years, this was the part of fashion I was trying to understand through my work in sustainable fashion and Ethical Brand Directory. But the more I learned about the industry, the less comfortable I became with drawing a simple line between cheap fashion and luxury.
Luxury Isn’t Automatically Exempt
Luxury and fast fashion can look like completely different worlds from the outside. One might be sold in a beautiful boutique for £2,500. Another might cost £25 online. But the supply chains are not always as separate as we might assume.
During the UK’s Environmental Audit Committee inquiry into the sustainability of fashion, evidence was given that luxury and fast-fashion businesses could use the same factories, including in Leicester and India. The retail price could be very different without that difference necessarily translating into a significantly better wage for the person making the garment.
More recently, investigations into luxury supply chains in Italy have exposed serious problems further down the chain. In the Dior case, Italian prosecutors found suppliers using undocumented and exploited workers, and court documents reported that contractors were being paid as little as €53 for handbags that retailed for around €2,600.
That doesn’t mean every luxury garment is made this way. It does mean that the price on the label cannot tell us everything about the garment or the people who made it.
Why Do We Trust the Luxury Label?
There is a psychological reason this is difficult to question. We use shortcuts when making decisions, particularly when we don’t have the time or expertise to investigate every product ourselves. Brand name and price can become signals of quality, prestige and value.
Research into consumer behaviour has found positive relationships between brand name, price and perceived product quality. Research into luxury perceptions has also found that price can strengthen perceptions of uniqueness and desirability, particularly among high-income consumers.
So when we walk into a luxury boutique and see a beautifully presented coat for £2,500, we bring a set of assumptions with us.
- We expect it to be better.
- We expect the materials to be exceptional.
- We expect the craftsmanship to justify the price.
- We expect the people who made it to have been properly paid.
Sometimes those assumptions will be correct. But the brand name and the price cannot guarantee all of them.
And Then There Are the Materials
Polyester is often associated with cheap clothing, but it is also widely used in high-end and designer fashion. There are legitimate reasons for using synthetic fibres. Polyester can offer particular performance, durability, structure, stretch and finishes that designers may want. But it is still a fossil-derived material.
The European Environment Agency notes that synthetic fibres such as polyester and nylon are produced from fossil fuel resources such as oil and natural gas. Their production uses non-renewable resources, creates greenhouse gas emissions and synthetic textiles can release microplastics throughout their lifecycle.
High fashion is not exempt from this either. Business of Fashion reported in 2026 that polyester remains widely used by high-end labels because of its versatility and technical properties. So paying a luxury price does not make a polyester garment environmentally neutral.
And when you are investing £2,500 in a coat, £10,000 in a bespoke wardrobe piece or considerably more on a handbag, vintage or archival piece, it is reasonable to want to understand what you are actually buying. That’s why it’s important to work with someone who can make those judgements and decisions on your behalf.
The True Cost
The True Cost is a powerful and thought-provoking documentary that explores the social and environmental impact of the fashion industry. It was released in 2015, and when I watched it, it changed the way I looked at clothing.
At the time, the focus for me was very much on fast fashion and the people paying the hidden cost of cheap clothes. That knowledge shaped much of my work afterwards. It led me deeper into sustainable fashion, ethical brands, production, materials and supply chains, and eventually to creating Ethical Brand Directory.
My thinking has developed since then. I no longer see sustainable fashion as a simple question of identifying the brands that appear to tick every box. The fashion industry is more complicated than that.
Be Aware, Ask Questions, Start Conversations
There is no 100% sustainable choice and there is no 100% ethical choice. There are always compromises, competing considerations and grey areas. That’s part of what makes this difficult. It is also why I don’t think sustainable fashion should become another set of rules that women have to follow perfectly.
Sometimes the research, the labels, the materials, the supply chains and the competing claims simply become too much to navigate on your own.
This is where some of my clients come to me. They want the due diligence, expertise and judgement to be done with them, and in many cases on their behalf, so they can make more informed decisions without having to spend hours researching every brand, garment and material themselves.
I work with clients to create wardrobes that reflect who they are and what they believe in, whether you are vegan, have a very specific style or aesthetic, love vintage and archive pieces, or simply want to make more considered choices about what you buy.
My job is not to dress you like me, and it is not to persuade you to follow the same beliefs or habits that I have. It is to understand what matters to you, establish your own boundaries and create a style roadmap that helps you build a personal style that feels unmistakably yours. And that applies whether we are looking at the high street, an independent designer, a vintage piece or a luxury house.
The True Cost Isn’t Just About Cheap Clothes
For years, the conversation around the true cost of fashion has concentrated on the £20 dress and the £5 top. We needed that conversation. But if we only ask questions of the cheapest end of the market, we are missing part of the picture.
The woman spending £2,500 on a coat can still ask where it was made, who made it, what the fabric is, how well it has been constructed and what she is actually paying for. Having the means to spend more doesn’t remove the need for discernment. In some ways, it gives you more opportunity to exercise it.
- You don’t have to stop buying beautiful clothes.
- You don’t have to buy only from brands that claim to be perfect.
- You do have the opportunity to look beyond the label and make a more informed decision about what deserves a place in your wardrobe.
That is the conversation I am interested in now when I talk about sustainable luxury.
First published April 2017. Updated May 2023. Updated again September 2026.
