My Guide To 150+ Sustainable Fashion Brands

It’s time. As my final post for 2020, it’s time for my bumper guide to the best sustainable fashion brands in the UK! After six years of writing, and hundreds of posts, I’ve condensed all my favourite fashion brands into this massive list for you to explore…

This guide is the antidote to my guide to fast fashion, which came out in the middle of this year. I had been getting so frustrated by the lack of transparency, ethical working conditions, and sustainable practices, despite a huge surge in greenwashing campaigns. This list will hopefully help you to steer away from those brands, or at the very list, give you something to compare mainstream brands to.

I’ve always been hesitant to simply list out all of the brands that I consider to be more sustainable than mainstream fashion brands, because as we’ve seen with the likes of Everlane or Reformation, it’s a lot harder to discern if a business truly does put people and planet before profit. However, for every single business listed here, I do trust the transparency and work that they are putting in to create a cleaner, fairer fashion industry.

And, as with all my guides, I’ll be updating this over time. So if there’s any brands missing, or if you have a question over something, please do comment!

What Makes A Fashion Brand Sustainable?

There’s no official definition for ‘sustainable fashion’, but I believe anyone can suss out whether a fashion brand is sustainable or not.

When it comes to finding out which brands are more sustainable than others, I recommend looking for the four following factors:

  1. Social sustainability: the brand shows clear information around who makes their clothes, and how they treat their people ethically, with respect and fair pay.
  2. Environmental sustainability: the brand uses organic, natural and regenerated materials, and actively works to reduce its impact across energy and water use, as well as avoiding harmful chemicals.
  3. Slowing down production: the brand produces a moderate amount of clothing, with a maximum of four seasons or collections each year.
  4. Circularity: the brand recognises its duty to take back clothing at the end of its life, and reuse, recycle, and reduce the amount of waste it produces.

How To Approach Fashion More Sustainably

Alongside the four principles that can make fashion brands more sustainable, it’s also worth changing how you approach fashion. According to a Government report, in the UK we buy more clothes than any other nation in Europe, and that rate is simply unsustainable.

To enjoy fashion more sustainably, I recommend:

  • Reducing how much clothing you buy
  • Accessing fashion in a circular way, such as shopping second-hand
  • Taking time to work out which styles suit you, so you’ll be more satisfied with the pieces in your wardrobe
  • Caring for your clothes so they last longer

If you’re wondering about “eco-friendly” ranges within larger fashion brands, my response remains: why can’t they be sustainable across all their products? In almost all cases, these collections focus on using materials that are more sustainable than the regular ranges, but that isn’t saying much. In my opinion, that isn’t real sustainability.

Nevertheless, these high-street shops are a great place to start getting fashion conscious, but there’s so many better brands to explore below…

191 Sustainable Fashion Brands in UK

This guide draws upon all of my shopping guides, as well as the knowledge, advice, and recommendations of my favourite ethical fashion blogs, influencers, and the pillars of the sustainable fashion space.

For this guide, I decided to order the brands by price. Sure, sustainability is often more expensive, but there are affordable and mid-range options out there too!

Oh, and just a note – these brands are focused on womenswear predominantly, but may also do menswear, accessories, homewares, and more. If you’re looking for something more specific, check out my shopping guides.

50 Affordable Sustainable Fashion Brands

85 Mid-Range Sustainable Fashion Brands

56 Luxury Sustainable Fashion Brands

Looking For Something More Specific?

Sometimes less is more! If you’re looking for a specific item, why not check my existing sustainable shopping guides →

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links (denoted '*'). Photography by Lauren Shipley.

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16 Comments

  1. Maggie
    May 6, 2023 / 7:22 pm

    I love this list! Would love to see cotopaxi on this list. There are a couple of brands that I don’t know if they would be fast fashion or sustainable like Alohas and would love to hear your thoughts!

    • besma
      Author
      May 10, 2023 / 3:34 pm

      Ooh, will go take a look at Cotopaxi and add if I think they’re up to scratch. I’m on the fence with Alohas – they seem to market themselves very heavily, almost as aggressively as fast fashion, and I’m not sure the credentials are there. I opted not to work with them in the past for this reason, but haven’t looked deeper than that! Will add to my list of brands to look at…

      B x

  2. March 17, 2023 / 6:46 am

    I am super thankful for the list of sustainable brands! A lot of the time, we spend so much time looking for this exact thing! Thank you for sharing your thoughts and taking the time to create this list. 🙂

    • besma
      Author
      March 20, 2023 / 12:26 pm

      Always happy to help signpost more sustainable brands! I’d love to build on this list more, so if you have any additional recommendations please let me know and I’ll add them!

      B x

  3. Lulu
    December 11, 2022 / 1:01 am

    Thank you for compiling this list, I am very new to sustainable fashion and I thought sustainable brands would be super expensive (mainly because Stella McCartney and Vivienne Westwood were the only brands I knew). Can’t wait to look through the entire “affordable brands” list :))

    • besma
      Author
      December 12, 2022 / 1:41 pm

      This makes me so happy Lulu! Thank you for checking out my guide and for the kind comment.

      B x

  4. Lucie Zeale
    May 7, 2021 / 5:50 pm

    Hello, I am a recent convert to sustainable buying, I have bought a pair of mud jeans and they are lovely, so hard wearing and comfy. However when I tried to get more they were sold out on Know the Origin and Mud were not selling directly in the UK due to Brexit. Do you think this will continue to be a problem for sustainable brands?

    • besma
      Author
      May 10, 2021 / 4:52 pm

      Hi Lucie, thanks for sharing this! It’s great to hear you’re a new convert, but also sad to hear that MUD’s collection is a lot harder to get hold of in the UK now due to Brexit. I bought a pair from the brand directly a few years ago, but it seems the best way to get them now is through an online boutique (Content sells them if you can’t find them on KTO, here’s a link to their selection of MUD Jeans*)

      I’ve tried to keep up with the effects of Brexit on the fashion industry through Fashion Roundtable – have you heard of them? Their newsletters are great for industry insights. That said it appears our Government is not taking the fashion industry’s issues very seriously, and it’s causing a lot of issues with shipping, customs, availability, additional costs etc. If only Brexit had never happened!

      B x

  5. Abdul Basit
    April 22, 2021 / 9:20 am

    Important information catagory wise and sustainable brands or buyers who follow laws

    • besma
      Author
      April 22, 2021 / 10:15 am

      Thanks Abdul – it’s often hard to distinguish this, but I hope the lists only include fashion businesses doing things in a better and fairer way!

      B x

  6. Kiera
    April 6, 2021 / 5:05 pm

    This is such an amazing post!!! Thank you.

    Have you thought about creating a post to highlight alternative or sustainable ways of marketing for brands? Facebook, Instagram, Google and all the others are cashing in, spreading hate and driving fast fashion. It seems crazy for conscious brands to fuel this negativity by advertising on those platforms. Surely there must be another way to reach consumers directly?

    • besma
      Author
      April 8, 2021 / 11:37 am

      Hi Keira, what a great concept! It’s interesting to see that big media businesses are happily saying they’re greening themselves while still promoting the fast fashion industry (and many other industries linked to fossil fuels!) It may well be a long time before there’s a true change, because of the vast power and money that exploitative businesses make in comparison to more sustainable ones, but I do hope this happens.

      B x

  7. Helena
    February 28, 2021 / 9:37 am

    Thank you so much for this, it is super useful! I was just wondering what happened to some of the websites that now just appear as asterisks? Thanks, Helena 🙂

    • besma
      Author
      March 1, 2021 / 1:24 pm

      Hi Helena, this is caused by your adblocker – please disable it for this site so they show.

      B x

  8. Emily
    February 20, 2021 / 10:11 pm

    Wow, what a feat! Thank you so much for all the effort that went into this!

    • besma
      Author
      February 22, 2021 / 10:05 am

      Thanks Emily! It was a labour of love, I hope you find some sustainable brands to love in the list!

      B x

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