The Verdrobe Emerging Designer Standard

This is the standard we hold emerging and independent designers to before they can be listed on the Verdrobe designer board. It’s a companion to, and deliberately different from, the Verdrobe Standard for established brands. It’s our editorial view, based on what a designer discloses and shows us at the time of review, and we date and archive it every time it changes.

Why emerging designers get their own standard

The certifications that anchor our established-brand standard (for example, B Corp, GOTS, recognized fair-labor schemes) could cost more than a small designer’s entire production run. Holding a one-person atelier to the same paperwork as a global brand would quietly shut out exactly the people making some of the most responsible clothing there is: makers working in tiny quantities, close to their materials, with nothing to hide but no budget to certify.

So we assess emerging designers on what they can honestly show us: who makes their clothes, what they’re made of, and how they’re produced, rather than on certificates they can’t yet afford.

How we assess a designer

A designer being featured on Verdrobe typically sends us information with supporting evidence including photographs, workshop or supplier details, and material documentation. We then review it and often talk to the designer before listing. We rely on what the designer tells and shows us, and where a claim can be backed with certification, we note it.

The Verdrobe Standard: five things a designer must meet

To be listed, a designer has to meet all five.

1. Named, traceable production

The designer can tell you who makes the garment and where, whether it is their own hands, a named atelier, a named workshop or factory, rather than an anonymous “ethically made.” This is the emerging-designer version of certified labor: not an audited certificate, but a real, findable maker the designer names and stands behind.

2. Material transparency

The designer discloses what a piece is made of and, as far as they know it, where the material came from, for example, deadstock from a named source, a named mill, certified organic yarn, reclaimed textiles.

The same materials view that guides our established-brand standard applies here:

• Certified organic natural fibres such as cotton, linen, hemp, and wool. Organic standards such as GOTS ban synthetic pesticides and fertilisers and set environmental and social rules across the supply chain.
• Low-input fibres such as linen and nettle, which generally need little irrigation or pesticide compared with conventional cotton, though retting and processing carry impacts of their own.
• Closed-loop cellulosics such as lyocell, often made from eucalyptus pulp in a solvent-recovery process that recaptures most of the water and solvent, which makes it meaningfully cleaner than conventional viscose.
• Recycled natural fibres, deadstock, and upcycled textiles, which use material that already exists and skip the impact of making it new.
• Recycled synthetics, for genuine performance wear, ideally certified to the Global Recycled Standard (GRS). They cut demand for virgin fossil plastic and divert waste, but they still shed microplastics in wear and washing,¹ and most are made from drinks bottles rather than old clothes, so they don’t close the textile loop.² We think they earn their place where synthetic performance is genuinely needed: technical outerwear, swim, and stretch.

3. Made to order, not to inventory

We prefer designers that produce to demand, for example, made-to-order, pre-order, or genuinely small numbered runs. Making only what someone actually wants is the most direct answer there is to fashion’s overproduction problem.

4. An honest position on leather

The position that guides our established-brand standard applies here.

We don’t treat “vegan leather” as a sustainability feature in its own right. Most of what’s sold under that name is polyurethane on a synthetic backing, and in our experience a fair amount of it tends to wear out sooner and be harder to repair than the hide it replaces, though this varies widely by product, and the category is improving quickly. Many “plant-based” leathers still rely on plastic binders, too. Where a next-generation alternative publishes its actual make-up and durability, we’ll look at it case by case, and we welcome your feedback.

We don’t romanticise animal leather either: cattle farming and careless tanning carry real environmental costs. For a designer, leather earns its place when it’s the durable choice for the piece and the sourcing is documented: a named tannery, vegetable tanning, reclaimed or deadstock hide, or a next-generation alternative whose make-up and durability the designer can describe honestly. At a small maker’s scale, documentation stands in for the tannery certification we ask of established brands.

5. Worth keeping

A garment has to be something you will actually want to wear for years and this may be the most important of the five. WRAP’s research finds that keeping clothes in active use for an extra nine months can cut their carbon, water and waste footprints by roughly 20–30%;³ meanwhile, the number of times the average garment is worn before it’s thrown out has fallen by about 36% over fifteen years.⁴ A garment that’s never worn is a wholly wasted one. Style and substance aren’t opposites here: a piece you love and keep is the entire point. We look for design and quality built to outlast a trend, not to feed weekly novelty.

What this is not

• Not a certification, and not a badge. Passing this standard is our editorial view of a designer’s disclosures, not an audit, a guarantee, or a seal of our own.
• Not the same bar as our established-brand standard. A designer who meets this standard has cleared a transparency-and-production bar, not the third-party-certification bar we ask of established brands.
• Not free of commercial interest. Verdrobe may earn fees or commission in connection with emerging designers. It never affects whether a designer meets this standard.
• Not finished. This is v1.0. As designers grow, many will move up to the established-brand standard, and we’ll revise this one as the evidence and the platform develop.

Notes

1. J. Boucher & D. Friot, Primary Microplastics in the Oceans: A Global Evaluation of Sources, IUCN (2017) estimates that roughly 35% of primary microplastics released to the world’s oceans come from the laundering of synthetic textiles. iucn.org
2. Ellen MacArthur Foundation, A New Textiles Economy: Redesigning Fashion’s Future (2017) reports that less than 1% of the material used to make clothing is recycled back into clothing. ellenmacarthurfoundation.org
3. WRAP, Extending Product Lifetimes: WRAP’s Work on Clothing Durability finds that extending the active life of clothing by nine months can reduce its carbon, water and waste footprints by around 20–30%. wrap.ngo
4. Ellen MacArthur Foundation, A New Textiles Economy: Redesigning Fashion’s Future (2017) finds that clothing utilisation (the number of times a garment is worn before disposal) has fallen 36% compared with fifteen years earlier. ellenmacarthurfoundation.org