Yes, I did legitimately ask for white crew cut socks for Hanukkah. Technically I asked for white socks and a hair diffuser (a girl’s gotta have her hair care routine after all), but the white socks were definitely the part that I was the most excited about. That may sound a little strange considering that white socks are traditionally the most boring, least effort gift you could get for anyone, but hear me out. These weren’t just any normal socks, these were 100% carbon-neutral, 100% organic cotton, grown and sewn in the USA, plastic free packaging Harvest Mill Organic Clothing white crew cut socks, and they had been burning a hole in my “Want to Buy” Bookmarks Folder for the better part of six months. Why did I ask my lovely parents to buy me socks instead of doing so myself? Because they were $31.95 for a pack of three, meaning just over $10 a pair, and thus something that was too expensive for me to justify getting on my own … especially since it was literally just a pair of socks. Considering that I could get an 8-pack of white socks at Kohl’s for $10 total, I couldn’t quite convince myself that it was a worthwhile purchase to make. It would have been easier, in fact, to just have continued to buy my white crew socks at Kohl’s or Primark or wherever else, but I’ve been trying to make a commitment to making more sustainable fashion purchases this year, and so I told myself that the next pair of socks I bought would be from Harvest and Mill.

There’s a lot of talk these days about sustainable shopping and living practices. “De-influencing” and “Underconsumption Core” make the daily rounds on TikTok, shopping small and thrifting are more trendy than ever and sleek, minimal living is constantly upheld as the pinnacle of modern life. But as great as those shifts are, the way that our society functions is still fundamentally built around cheap labor, disposable products and shipping practices that are detrimental to the environment. We see this in many places. The most obvious example is, of course, Amazon, which is so all-knowing nowadays that it can be difficult to imagine life without it. With the click of a button you can find ten thousand options for a pair of jean shorts or a tank top or white crew cut socks, all at an unbelievable price, from a brand you’ve probably never heard of and with the assurance of same-day shipping (or even same-day delivery) built in. 

The convenience is often so unwavering that you don’t think twice about how the site is able to offer such a deal. How are they making money off this when every other supplier of the same product is charging more? At what factory could this possibly have been fabricated, and how are they paying their workers? Where was the cotton grown? Wait … you still need to grow cotton? The way that we interact with clothing now makes it fundamentally more difficult to properly consider these questions every time we choose to buy something. If you buy online, you’re separated from the product itself by a screen, and if you shop in-store, it’s difficult to compare the same product across different brands at the same time, leading you to make a purchase that you might regret in hindsight. Shein, Temu, Cider, Romwe, Fashion Nova, PacSun, Zara, H&M, Forever 21, Brandy Melville … brands like this have built their backbone on this type of service, and continue to profit from the fact that it is often much more time-consuming to find an actually sustainable—yet still affordable—alternative to something that you can find in fast fashion land in less than five seconds. 

Instant gratification can be hard to give up, especially when it seems impossible to find affordable, sustainable clothing brands at all. This is a legitimate qualm (one that I’m certainly not oblivious to since I am now the proud owner of $10-a-pop white crew socks), and although it’s true that it will be harder to find sustainable clothing at Shein or Forever 21 price points, you will find many, many sustainable products at Aritzia, Anthropologie, & Other Stories, Banana Republic and Abercrombie & Fitch (or cheaper!) price points. So if you were going to buy a cute top or a comfy sweatshirt at one of those stores, why not do the slight bit of extra research needed to locate an option that’s better for the planet and will probably last you longer anyway? 

But even if you’ve recommitted yourself to shopping sustainably, it can be an entirely different undertaking to actually verify if a company’s ethical and Earth-focused pledges hold water. Shein, a brand that we can all agree is one of the least sustainable on the planet, has a sustainability page on its website; one that, at first glance at least, might seem legitimate. Companies know that marketing themselves as sustainable is key for drawing in customers, and so they may stretch the truth a bit (or a lot, in Shein’s case) in order to hide some of their slightly nastier practices. Even Reformation, which took the fashion world by storm with its trendy, upscale sustainable offerings, is also an example of this. Although they are certainly doing much, much more to protect the environment than Shein is, investigations have shown that they might not quite be the “second most sustainable clothing option, besides being naked,” which they have long marketed themselves as. 

But then, who can you actually trust for the low down on sustainable fashion brands? From my experience, the best answer, at least as a starting point to doing your own research, is “Good On You.” Good On You is an online sustainable fashion and beauty rating site, giving companies a score from “We Avoid” to “Great” based on a variety of factors including worker treatment, water usage and commitments to a greener and cleaner Earth. Good on You has extensive documentation on their website that explains exactly what goes into a brand’s rating and has a catalog tracking nearly every brand that you could think of off the top of your head. You have the ability to sort based on rating quality and intended purchase, meaning that if you theoretically wanted to purchase the most sustainable white crew cut socks possible, you could easily look for that on the site.

The rating isn’t a black box, either. Each brand is given a detailed breakdown of what they are currently excelling at as well as what might warrant further work. This model of criticism allows Good On You to further stand apart, as it clearly frames any current issues as room to grow rather than a failure on the company’s part. This framework makes it very clear to you as a consumer which companies care about the issues that you care about, empowering you to make your purchases at businesses both large and small you can feel proud to support. 

So, now to actually do something with all of this information. The first and most important thing is to fight the urge to get rid of everything you currently own whose origins were less than stellar. The most sustainable thing that you can do as a consumer is always to wear the products you have until they give out. And then, when you grow out of a piece or decide you don’t like it anymore or realize that you bought it for an imagined version of your life rather than for the real thing (not speaking from personal experience or anything), you should donate it instead of throwing it out. Since we’re all based in Waltham for at least part of the year, the city’s recycling department has a page on their website dedicated to local chapters of charities that accept second-hand donations. Beyond the Bin is another site where you can search and locate nearby drop-off locations that accept clothing and textiles, both in Massachusetts and beyond. In terms of online-based donation services, Trashie and ThredUp both offer “Take Back Bags,” which will ship to your doorstep and allow you to send them back with any no-longer-wanted items. Supercircle is another similar online service, which gives you discounts at popular stores in exchange for sending in used clothing. Freecycle is also a good bet, though if you want to try reselling on your own, be a little bit wary of putting products up yourself on resell sites like Poshmark. The postings can sit there for years without any action, which will in the end still leave you with clothing that you don’t really want. You may notice that Goodwill is conspicuously missing from this list. That isn’t necessarily to say that Goodwill is an undeserving organization, just that since they are often synonymous with second-hand, the sheer volume of donations they receive per year translates into millions of items being thrown away instead of resold in their stores. At the end of the day, where you choose to send your pre-loved clothes is completely up to you, but just as you would for making a new purchase, it all comes down to research and finding an organization with a resonating mission. 

In regards to getting a new item of clothing, my advice is to try and actively think about the purchase before you go through with it. Ask yourself: where will I wear this? What outfits will work with this? Do I already have an item in my wardrobe that fulfills the same fashion purpose that this would? If you can see yourself forgetting that you own this piece, that’s likely a sign that you don’t need to buy it in the first place. You’ll often find that you’re happier when you have a solid set of reliable options that can be mixed-and-matched and dressed up or dressed down rather than when you’re working off of trends, cycling through clothes year after year and spending time going through everything in your closet trying to find a combination that works. That isn’t to say that there’s a specific rulebook on how to style yourself, but you should always try to listen to what you want to wear. That will make you a far more sustainable shopper than if you stress about minimizing your carbon footprint to as tiny a speck as possible. Even given all of that, I’m still not saying that you should buy Harvest and Mill white crew cut socks for $31.95—or even ask someone to get them for you for Hanukkah. That’s a ridiculous amount to spend on socks, and an amount that I’ll probably never “shoe” out again on such a reliable basic. I opened with that anecdote, though, because I think it’s emblematic of the way in which my journey into sustainable fashion has had an outsized impact on my decisions as a consumer, a journey that I hope has inspired you to think more critically about what you wear and how it’s made.