sizing

A few weeks ago, there was a thread on /r/ffa about free fashion related online courses. I enrolled in the Fashion and Sustainability course created by London College of Fashion and Kering, and have been reading through it. In the course, they linked to a fantastic collection of resources by the CFDA. My favourite of which is the Material Index, which although is a little sparse on the common fabrics, provides quite detailed information (silk is worse than I thought 😭) on what they have and includes a lot of innovative materials.

Based on what I've learned there, and in efforts to even more selective of what new clothing I buy, I've decided to focus on alpaca for knitwear and linen/hemp for woven.

Of course the source of each materials matters tremendously, and the current market seems to be a choose 2 of 3 between: reliable/certified source, price, and design. As an example, Everlane is price and design for alpaca sweaters, and Patagonia is reliable and price for hemp shirts. I'm even willing to relent on price, but it seems that reliable and design is the rarest of combinations. So far I found IOAN alpaca sweater as a good candidate, but I'm holding off until the far future when I can again travel to New York to try it on in person since the sizing is unisex.
(my list of shops to visit in-person in NYC is astoundingly long now...good thing a trip is not in the near future as my wallet needs some fattening up in preparation).

Hemp is even harder to find good designs for. All I can find is catered towards outdoors-use, which is not my preference. Seriously why isn't hemp more widely used? Canada is even a top producer of the plant! I'll have to resort to linen, which isn't too much of a downgrade in terms of sustainability (the only difference is that hemp is more productive per land area), but I haven't found any brand with certified organic linen. For now I'll likely continue buying from the Off/On, the Lithuania-based Etsy shops that I previously bought a dress from, which is at least a plus for supporting small businesses.