We Can't Make It, But...

Sustainable fashion has had a difficult year.

In May of this year, Everlane, the American brand that spent more than a decade building its reputation on "radical transparency", reportedly sold to Shein. The same Shein that has become shorthand for everything critics dislike about fast fashion. Around the same time, Allbirds, another darling of the sustainable movement, quietly shifted its attention away from environmental messaging toward artificial intelligence (yep... You read that right... AI).

For many people, these stories felt like betrayals. Consumers had paid more, bought less and tried to support companies whose values reflected their own. Yet when the economics became difficult, those values proved more fragile than expected.

It left me wondering whether we have been asking the wrong question all along. Perhaps sustainability isn't a single model waiting for the world to adopt. Perhaps it looks different depending on where in the world you begin.

Hard Truth

I want to admit something that makes me very uncomfortable, and annoyed, and disappointed: Jamaica cannot manufacture fashion competitively.

Not at scale. Not sustainably. Not in the way Italy or Portugal can. Not in the way India or China can.

That isn't because Jamaicans lack creativity or skill. It is because we are a small island that imports almost everything required to make almost anything. Fabric, trims, machinery, specialist equipment, dyes, components, shipping—they all arrive by sea before a garment ever reaches someone's wardrobe.

Our textile traditions have largely disappeared. Batik survives in pockets. Weaving survives in pockets. New movements occasionally emerge with passion but struggle against the economics of geography. This is not a Jamaican failure. It is simply our reality. And pretending otherwise helps nobody.

Yet, when you step back from manufacturing, you notice that Jamaica has always exported something else. Ideas.

Reggae conquered the world. Patois appears in songs, films and everyday conversation thousands of miles from Kingston. Jerk seasoning has travelled across the globe. Our athletes, artists and writers have shaped global culture from an island of fewer than three million people. Some countries export products. Jamaica has always exported imagination.

Perhaps fashion is no different.

Say What Now?

That single perceptual shift has changed how I think about sustainability. We often reduce it to a question of production. Where was this made? How far did it travel? What certification does the factory carry? And those are important questions. They should continue to be asked.

But they are not the only questions.

There is another kind of sustainability. The sustainability of culture, language, memory... of identity. Because cultures disappear too. Imperceptibly. One phrase replaced by another. One craft forgotten. One story no longer told. Until eventually something that survived for centuries vanishes without anyone noticing when it happened.

This is why I find the work of Jamaican designer Rachel Scott so compelling from a philosophical standpoint (not really my thing aesthetically). Her label, Diotima, is celebrated around the world because every collection begins here, even though the garments are necessarily sewn in Jamaica. Many... most... are not.

Crochet becomes a conversation about the lace doilies found in traditional Jamaican homes. Caribbean histories morph into contemporary luxury. The cultural memory is the craft. That is something no factory can replicate. The value is in the idea.

The same lesson appears elsewhere.

South African designer Laduma Ngxokolo builds MaXhosa from Xhosa identity rather than anonymous global fashion trends. Indian artisans continue centuries-old traditions that existed long before anyone invented the phrase "sustainable fashion."

Different countries with different histories, building on the same principle: Culture is the underpinning.

Can Sustainability Be Outsourced?

That matters even more for places like Jamaica. Large manufacturing nations compete through scale. Small islands rarely can. If we try to compete with factories capable of producing hundreds of thousands of identical garments every month, we lose before we begin.

But that has never been Jamaica's game. We compete through originality. Through language. Through humour. Through rhythm. Through resistance. Through seeing the world in ways that nobody else does. Those things are infinitely harder to copy than a T-shirt.

So... Can sustainability can be outsourced?

If buying an ethically produced garment means never thinking about where the ideas for the garment come from. Where this idea and culture come from, what survives and who gets remembered, then we have only shifted responsibility from one place to another.

Sustainability isn't only environmental. It is cultural. Economic. Human.

Sustainability questions whether the communities creating meaning are able to continue creating it.

Sustainability, Narrowly Defined, Will Fail

This has shaped every decision I make as a designer. I have never pretended to manufacture everything myself. I can't. I design in Jamaica. I develop ideas in Jamaica. I tell deeply personal Jamaican stories. And I want to work with the best manufacturing partners I can find to translate those ideas into garments.

As my production evolves, I will continue to tell people exactly where those garments are made and why I chose those partners. Because transparency, honesty is a good look. That honesty also means accepting that some of the most sustainable decisions are surprisingly ordinary.

Producing smaller quantities. Avoiding unnecessary inventory. Making pieces people genuinely want rather than filling warehouses with garments that may never find owners. Designing things intended to remain relevant after trends have moved on. These are basic, practical ideas.

Perhaps this is what the collapse of some sustainable fashion icons has taught me: Sustainability, narrowly defined, will fail. Factories matter. Materials matter. Labour matters. These things always will. But... so do stories, and communities. So do cultures that continue creating radical new ideas instead of disappearing beneath the weight of global sameness. A truly sustainable future should make room for all of these channels.

Jamaica has proven that influence does not depend on industrial scale. We have exported music more successfully than machinery. Language more successfully than literature. Ideas more successfully than products. Fashion may become the next chapter in that story... if only because we can imagine something no one else can.

We can't make everything. But we can definitely design things worth making. And perhaps, in the long run, that is our most valuable export.