by For brands that want to get their way with greenwashing, one solution has become especially popular: putting an influencer on it. From Boohoo naming Kourtney Kardashian as its “sustainability ambassador” to a Shein influencer’s notorious trip to promote its “innovation hub” in China, the use of influencers has become a common tactic to draw attention to half-hearted green initiatives and to create a cushion between the brand and public reaction.
Recently, we’ve seen influencers act as faces of PR campaigns, such as Pretty Little Thing’s Marketplace resale site and H&M’s Conscious line: derivative products that are explicitly presented as a remedy for a brand’s negative impact on the planet and that usually come accompanied by a big, but somewhat vague environmental promise. H&M, for example, plans to use only sustainably sourced materials by 2030. Boohoo aims to achieve carbon reductions across its value chain.
But part of the reason greenwashing has become so ubiquitous (and, in many ways, so successful for brands) is that influencers don’t just greenwash when a brand pays them to do it, but rather they obtain the benefits of associating with an environmental language. while maintaining an audience and lucrative returns by pushing fast fashion products.
It’s easy to find this type of influencer (in fact, it’s arguably easier to find an influencer who is nodding and focused on the environment than one who actually is). A notable example is American influencer Reese Blutstein, known to her 353,000 Instagram followers for her “sustainable wardrobe,” which highlights vintage clothing and repeat outfits. For years, she has spoken in various publications about sustainability and the need to use what we already have and increase scrutiny around fast fashion practices. However, he has done several collaborations with some of the biggest players in fast fashion, such as Zara, and has written a long and valuable message about his intention to help make the brand more sustainable in the long term, saying that he “never “It was my intention to be a voice of public social commentary.”
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Others are more subtle. Anna Newton, better known by her name @theannaedit, blogs about a minimalist approach to fashion, advocating a capsule wardrobe and buying only what you need, or what you’ll wear again and again. However, along with advertising for fast fashion brands like Arket and Sézane, which present her clothes as suitable for capsule wardrobes, Newton puts together gigantic roundups of fast fashion items almost entirely filled with affiliate links (paying her a commission). This particular type of eco-adjacent influence is extremely common. Monikh Dale (365,000 followers) similarly takes this sustainable, minimalist approach to fashion, encouraging her followers to practice greener shopping and avoid fast fashion while making money with affiliate links to clothing from brands like & Other Stories and H&M , and collaborates on “sustainable lines” from fast fashion brands and retailers, including Mango. Any time spent in these corners of TikTok and Instagram will reveal an endless series of influencers doing this performative bait and switch, collectively reaching dozens of millions of followers.
Some of this is at the service of fast fashion brands created by the influencers themselves. The most obvious example is Tala, owned by influencer and entrepreneur Grace Beverley (more than a million followers). The brand, which originally offered a limited line of leggings, sports bras and tops, now sells a range of loungewear, outerwear, accessories and activewear that are said to be made mostly from recycled and “natural” materials. ”, manufactured ethically by properly compensated workers. Beverley, as founder, heavily promotes the brand to her more than one million followers on Instagram and TikTok, in addition to promoting her own eco-friendly lifestyle.
At first glance, this all sounds great. But a closer look shows something less green. This autumn Tala launched several new product lines, one of which sold £1m worth of stock in one day, moving over 6,000 units (this pace of new launches is not unusual). He has partnered with fast fashion companies, selling his clothes through Asos and doing a dedicated collaboration with Fila. Furthermore, his products are only partly made from recycled materials and often recycled polyester; The sustainability that environmental advocates wish to highlight is limited.
Independent ethical shopping site Good On You gave Tala an overall sustainability score of 3 out of 5, which it characterized as “a start” in terms of the company’s sustainability efforts. It’s not the worst offender, but it’s also not the demanding approach to sustainability that you might expect, given its green marketing: an approach in fact adopted by companies like Organic Basics or Girlfriend Collective, who seem to back up their eco-friendly claims. Tala’s website notes that she is simply trying to make more sustainable choices and that sustainability is a “journey; It is not a final destination.”
Other influential sustainable style brands take a similar “we’re trying, sort of” approach. One example is Matilda Djerf’s Djerf Avenue, which promotes an image of ethically made essentials. However, it weakly describes its core values as the “pursuit of sustainability” which, just like Tala, it sees as a “journey, not a destination,” caveating all this with the note that “achieving absolute sustainability is a challenge because to environmental impacts.” associated with manufacturing processes.
The message that links all of these influencers is that they want to push you to think more sustainably – enough to satisfy their brand needs – but never strong enough to cause the disruptive change that would lead to significant environmental impact. The language is universally apologetic and mild. On Tala’s website, which justifies his participation in Black Friday, he says: “Let’s be real. As a fashion business, the “holiday period” is an important time of year. And what’s more, we don’t believe that yelling at people to stop using completely is really the answer to changing the entire industry.”
There is an instinct around these green influencers and brands to be defensive of the good things they do, particularly in comparison to the broader fast fashion and influencer industries. A brand like Tala is certainly better than one like Shein, and pseudo-green influencers encourage slightly less consumption than someone like Molly-Mae Hague. But that doesn’t make any of this truly green, nor does it make it “sustainable” to profit from products that seem greener than they really are.
Being a lifestyle influencer is all about constantly maintaining the attention of your audience. This means showing them something new and, usually, on a daily basis, finding new products and services to keep that attention. That’s why fast fashion and influence have always been such a happy association. But true sustainability requires something antithetical: slowing down and being satisfied with what we have and only what we need. It is difficult to see a future in which this fundamental truth fits into these two symbiotic industries.
