What Is Greenwashing in Fashion — And How to Spot It
At some point in the last decade, sustainability became fashionable. Not in the sense that conscious consumption became genuinely mainstream — it did not, not yet — but in the sense that the language of sustainability became something every fashion brand wanted to be associated with. Eco. Green. Conscious. Responsible. Considered. These words began appearing on hangtags, in brand manifestos and across Instagram captions with a frequency that bore no consistent relationship to the actual practices of the brands using them.
This is greenwashing — the use of environmental or ethical language to create an impression of sustainability that is not supported by the brand's actual practices. It is widespread in fashion. It is often subtle. And it is worth understanding precisely, because the woman who cannot identify it is the woman most likely to have her purchasing decisions shaped by it.
This is not a comfortable topic for brands to write about. It requires honesty about an industry that Clyn is part of — and about the fact that building a genuinely sustainable brand is harder, more expensive and more demanding than the language of sustainability suggests. We are writing it anyway, because understanding greenwashing is part of being an informed conscious shopper. And that matters more to us than protecting the reputation of an industry that has not always deserved it.
What greenwashing actually is
Greenwashing describes the gap between what a brand says about its environmental or ethical practices and what those practices actually are. It exists on a spectrum — from deliberate, calculated misrepresentation to the more common, more ambiguous territory of claims that are technically true but presented in a way designed to create a misleading impression.
The deliberate end of the spectrum — a brand claiming its garments are sustainably made when they are not — is less common than it once was, partly because consumer scrutiny and regulatory attention have increased. The ambiguous middle — a brand highlighting one genuinely sustainable practice while obscuring the much larger unsustainable ones — is considerably more common and considerably harder to identify.
A fast fashion brand that launches a small capsule collection of recycled-material garments, markets it extensively as evidence of its sustainability credentials, and continues to produce thousands of new styles weekly in conventional fabrics is greenwashing. The capsule collection is real. The sustainability claim — as applied to the brand as a whole — is not.
The words that should prompt scrutiny
Certain words appear so frequently in fashion sustainability marketing that they have become almost meaningless — not because the concepts they describe are meaningless, but because the words have been adopted so broadly and applied so loosely that they no longer communicate anything verifiable about the brand using them.
None of these words are inherently dishonest. The problem is that they are used without substantiation — without the specific, verifiable evidence that would give them meaning. When a brand uses them, the right response is not to accept them and not to dismiss them, but to ask what they are based on. What specifically makes this garment eco-friendly? What practices make this brand sustainable? What does conscious mean in the context of this supply chain?
A brand that can answer these questions specifically and verifiably is a brand that has earned the language. A brand that responds with more general language is one that has not.
The most common greenwashing signals in fashion
One of the most common greenwashing patterns is the sustainable collection — a small range of garments made from organic cotton, recycled polyester or other more responsible materials, launched with significant marketing emphasis, within a brand that continues to operate a fundamentally fast fashion business model.
The collection is real. The materials may genuinely be more sustainable than the brand's conventional range. But the marketing presents this subset as evidence of the brand's sustainability values — when in fact it represents a small fraction of total production, and the vast majority of the brand's output remains unchanged.
Ask: what percentage of this brand's total production does the sustainable range represent? If the answer is less than a meaningful proportion of its overall output, the sustainable range is a marketing exercise rather than a genuine shift in practice.
Fashion certifications — GOTS, Fairtrade, B-Corp, Bluesign, Oeko-Tex — are genuinely useful signals when applied correctly. Each certifies something specific: the organic status of a fibre, the fair trade conditions of a supply chain, the overall sustainability performance of a business. When a brand displays a certification, it is worth understanding exactly what that certification covers — and what it does not.
A garment made from GOTS-certified organic cotton has been produced from fibres grown without synthetic pesticides or fertilisers. It has not necessarily been manufactured under fair labour conditions, or produced with minimal water use, or shipped with a reduced carbon footprint. The certification is real and meaningful for what it covers. It does not cover everything.
Greenwashing occurs when certifications are displayed in a way that implies comprehensive sustainability endorsement — when in fact they certify one specific aspect of one specific part of the supply chain. A brand displaying a single fibre certification while remaining opaque about its manufacturing practices is using a partial truth to create a comprehensive impression.
A genuinely sustainable brand can tell you where its garments were made, by whom, under what conditions and at what wages. It can name its manufacturing partners. It can describe the journey of its materials from raw fibre to finished garment. This transparency is not incidental to genuine sustainability practice — it is evidence of it.
A brand that uses sustainability language extensively but cannot or will not provide specific information about its supply chain is almost certainly greenwashing. The language is the claim. The supply chain information is the evidence. When the evidence is absent, the claim is unsubstantiated.
Ask: where was this garment made, and by whom? If the answer is vague, generic or absent, treat the brand's sustainability claims with corresponding scepticism.
Some of the most prominent fashion brands to adopt sustainability language in recent years are also among the highest-volume producers in the market. Brands releasing hundreds of new styles per week — or per day, in some cases — that describe themselves as sustainable or conscious are making a claim that is structurally difficult to sustain.
The environmental impact of fashion is primarily driven by volume — by the sheer quantity of garments produced, transported, worn briefly and discarded. A brand that produces at very high volume, regardless of the material choices it makes within that volume, is contributing to the structural problem that makes fashion one of the world's most polluting industries. Organic cotton produced in the thousands and worn twice is not meaningfully more sustainable than conventional cotton produced in the thousands and worn twice.
Genuine sustainability and genuine high volume are in tension. A brand that claims both without acknowledging that tension is, at minimum, being incomplete about its environmental position.
Greenwashing has a recognisable visual language. Earthy tones. Natural textures. Imagery of fields, fibres and hands at work. Copy written in a considered, unhurried tone that evokes craft and care. This aesthetic has become so associated with sustainable fashion that brands have adopted it as a shorthand — using the visual and tonal language of slow fashion to create an impression of values the brand has not actually committed to.
This is the most subtle form of greenwashing because it operates entirely through suggestion rather than statement. No claim is technically made. The aesthetic does the work instead — creating an impression that the viewer receives as an implication rather than an assertion, which makes it harder to challenge and easier to absorb uncritically.
The question is always: behind the aesthetic, what are the actual practices? Earthy tones are not a sustainability credential. A linen texture on the packaging is not evidence of an ethical supply chain. Beautiful photography of natural materials does not tell you how those materials were grown, processed or made.
The questions that cut through it
Greenwashing is most effective against consumers who do not ask specific questions. The most reliable way to identify it is to replace general impressions with specific enquiries — and to assess the quality of the answers as evidence of the brand's actual practices.
A note on Clyn
Writing a piece about greenwashing requires honesty about our own position. Clyn is a pre-launch brand. We have not yet produced a single garment for sale. We cannot yet point to a verified supply chain, a manufacturing partner we can name publicly, or a completed product whose material credentials we can document.
What we can say is this: the reason we are taking as long as we are to launch is precisely because we are not willing to make claims we cannot yet substantiate. We will not describe our garments as sustainable until we have the supply chain to back it up. We will not use the language of conscious fashion as marketing positioning before we have earned the right to it through practice.
We may not be perfect when we launch. We will be honest — about what we have achieved, about what we are working towards, and about the gap between the two. In an industry where the language of sustainability has become detached from its meaning, honesty is the minimum standard. We intend to exceed it.
We are launching AW27. Join our waitlist below. 🖤
0 comments