Episode 135: Mugs and Evening Gowns: Secondhand Shopping In Poland with Anna

Welcome to Clotheshorse, the podcast that has way too many mugs. If this is a statement that resonates with you, makes you feel truly seen…then I know you are an avid thrifter like Dustin and me.

I’m your host, Amanda and this is episode 135. Today’s special guest is Anna, aka the Witch of Witchwood. She is going to tell us about secondhand shopping and the thrift industry in Poland, where she has lived for more than a decade. Not to spoil the whole thing for you, but overall the secondhand industry..as in, the flow of secondhand items from original owners to their next home…is much different than the United States and I suspect it is because it has been corporatized. You be the judge when she tells you all about it! I also think there are some lessons for best practices to be learned and adapted to the way secondhand and rehoming works here in the US.

Before that, I’m going to give you the whole rundown on the recent lawsuit against H&M for greenwashing!

But first…I have to address a recent review Clotheshorse received on Apple podcasts. Not because I am angry at that person or that I think their opinion is more or less valuable than anyone else’s…but rather because what they don’t like about Clotheshorse is unfortunately (or fortunately) an intentional choice on my part. The review said basically (and I’m paraphrasing here) “The show is good but the episodes are too long so I stopped listening. The podcast needs more editing.”

If you know me IRL, then you know I am a person who is constantly in motion, constantly doing this or that, with very little down time. Every moment of my life (especially right now) is already spoken for by work or chores or personal relationships. Seriously, sometimes a friend will text me about a personal crisis they are having and I get so anxious about how I’m going to help them AND do all the other things I’m supposed to do, that I actually have to sit down for a minute and figure out how I’m going to make it work. Time is so precious to me.

Yet I’ve always been this whirling dervish. My brain works so much faster than my body, which also means I’m regularly running into walls, tripping, or breaking things. When I was a kid, my mom would call me “flighty,” but that wasn’t the right term at all. “Flighty” describes silliness, shallowness, lack of deep thought or care about something…and I’ve always been the opposite, always thinking the whole thing through to the end, wanting to hear the whole story.

The whole story is very important to me.

And so when I started making Clotheshorse, I knew that it wouldn’t be a short podcast. There are plenty of those out there–even in the world of sustainability, slow fashion, etc–and I knew that I could never limit myself to 30 minutes. I want to tell the whole story, I want to hear my guests’ whole stories, and I want you to know the whole story, to the best of my ability. And to be honest, I love a long podcast. My favorite soundtrack for housework and cooking is Molly McAleer’s “Mother May I Sleep With Podcast.” Most episodes of that range from 2-4 hours. Do I listen to an entire episode in one day? No, usually it takes me a few days. And you know what? I’m always kinda sad when it’s over.

I receive a lot of emails every week from sustainability experts and entrepreneurs who want to be on Clotheshorse, probably because they have never listened to an episode but see it has a following and they want some free marketing. I rarely choose to interview those potential guests because I know that they are already having their voices heard at work, on other shows, on social media, blogs, etc…I want Clotheshorse to be a platform for people who don’t get heard very often. I am a person who, before Clotheshorse, was rarely heard by anyone. And I have seen the huge impact being heard has had on my life, motivating me to work harder and make more change. I have heard from all of you that hearing me has motivated and inspired you. And so it’s important to me that all of the guests on Clotheshorse are given the space to say everything they want to say, to tell the whole story according to them. And you know what? In many cases that’s just not going to be a short episode. And I’m not going to edit out something that a guest thinks is important.

So yeah, Clotheshorse episodes are long and will continue to be long. I am playing around with other short format sources of info like Reels, but as one person with no extra time, it’s a slow process. But guess what? I do not expect you to listen to an entire episode in one day or sitting. No, I actually engineer them to be listened to in 3-4 segments. Ever notice how each episode has an intro story, the interview, and an outro story? Even the ads are placed to give you a pause point.

One of the only good pieces of advice my mom ever gave me was “Not everyone will like you.” I don’t expect everyone to like listening to this show or listening to me talk for so long every week. But if you’re here listening right now, I know you care about our planet and its people. So if you are looking for a shorter podcast, drop me a DM and I’ll send you some suggestions.

This week, we learned that H*M is being sued for “misleading” sustainability marketing and incredibly scammy, manipulated product scorecards. In the proposed class action complaint that she filed in a New York federal court on July 22, Plaintiff Chelsea Commodore claims H&M is “taking advantage of consumers’ interest” in sustainability and products that “do not harm the environment.” Yes, H&M has been greenwashing like it’s going out of style. It’s something all of us in the slow fashion movement have been yelling about for years. Commodore is hoping to not only receive damages for fraudulently “sustainable” product she was sold by H&M, but also get the court to certify her proposed class action, which would allow other customers who purchased H&M products that contained “a Sustainability Profile or a Sustainability Misrepresentation” to join in the action. This could be a MAJOR game changer in the world of fast fashion, greenwashing, marketing around environmental and ethical issues, and on and on. This case is a really big deal!!

How did it get to this point, specifically with H&M? We know that greenwashing is using false claims of “sustainability” as a marketing tool to drive sales. We also know that fast fashion can never be truly sustainable because it is a model of doing business that relies on selling as much stuff as possible, as often as possible. Overconsumption and overproduction is the exact opposite of sustainable!

H&M is a fast fashion brand. How did it become so caught up in greenwashing?

For years, as a person working in the fast fashion industry, H&M has been a cautionary tale. It was once one of the global leaders in fast fashion. When H&M began to open in the United States, consumers were beyond excited, lining up around the block outside stores on opening day and for weeks afterward. Sure H&M was inexpensive and trendy, but it had a bit of style cachet, as fashion bloggers and magazines alike embraced the brand. But by around 2015, it saw its sales slow down as more players like Zara, Fashion Nova, and (later) Shein emerged and picked up more market share.

By 2018, buying offices all over the world were shaking their heads and tsk-tsk-ing over the more than $4 billion in unsold inventory H&M was left with, the result of a perfect storm of picking the wrong product, making too much of it, and opening too many stores. At the time I was the Director of Merchandising for a small retail startup in the Pacific Northwest. And the CFO sent me a story from Business Insider about H&M’s very horrible excess inventory situation…with the statement “Please don’t ever let this happen to us.” I cannot emphasize enough how an inventory issue of that scale–or even just of that proportion to a business’s overall sales–would destroy many companies. It’s really a testament to the sheer cash flowing into H&M’s coffers every day, that $4 billion in unsold and probably unsellable inventory wouldn’t drive it into bankruptcy.

These troubles continued into 2019. And by 2020, the world knew that H&M was burning a lot of inventory—enough to fuel a power plant outside of Stockholm. Sales continued to decline that year and into 2021. Now, there is no company on this planet, especially an enormous publicly traded company like H&M, that will continue to let this kind of bad fiscal performance slide. It means that someone, or usually SOMEONESSSS, will lose their jobs. And in 2020, the CEO was replaced with Helena Helmersson, a longtime H&M employee who had most recently been the company’s sustainability manager.

Helmersson saw the writing on the wall. No one cared about H&M as a fashion brand. It had lost all appeal in terms of “style” and “trendiness.” No one was looking at it as THE place to shop. It couldn’t compete with more trendy, cheap brands like SHEIN. It wasn’t fancy enough to be Anthropologie. Not knock-off friendly like Zara. Not family-friendly and fun like Old Navy.

H&M really didn’t have an identity as a brand. It had simply become a place to buy cheap stuff. That wasn’t brand identity that would save the business. It needed its own “thing.” Something that would get customers in the door over and over again. And new CEO Helmersson knew just what would work: H&M could make itself relevant via claims of sustainability and an endless parade of “conscious” collections. Did it work? Kinda? Sales saw some recovery, but Helmersson was feeling so optimistic about this new sustainability direction, that she announced in February of this year that the company would double its sales by 2030…this from a brand that has had little cache in the past 7 years, with even it’s “cooler” brands like Cos and & Other Stories seeing a slow down.

Here’s the thing about H&M and every other fast fashion brand out there selling you a big helping of greenwashing every day: none of these brands can be sustainable at the level they are producing. No miracle fabric will ever allow us to shop the way we have in the fast fashion era. And furthermore, H&M will never, ever be sustainable—even if it does master circularity within its supply chain—if it’s not paying workers a living wage. And spoiler: it’s not!

We know that fast fashion is cutthroat about pricing and trends. And these brands and retailers love to copy one another! Greenwashing was already picking up momentum by 2020, but H&M’s steady flow of media coverage, social media posts, and “conscious” collections influenced the rest of the industry. This steady stream of marketing and media coverage is something Greenpeace calls “ad bluster,” when companies spend more resources like time and money promoting the supposedly “good” thing they did rather than investing those resources into ACTUALLY making a change.

But the ad bluster worked, on both consumers and competitors. For the first time in a very long time, H&M was actually setting the trend when it came to quasi sustainability…aka greenwashing! And here we are in 2022…greenwashing is everywhere! It’s hard to find a big brand or retailer that isn’t actively working to appear to be more environmentally conscious than it truly is. Fortunately, they all use the same tricks (just like they all essentially sell the same trends, fabrics, and clothes), so when you learn to spot it from one retailer, you’ll start to recognize it everywhere.

One big huge red flag of greenwashing is the use of words that just don’t mean very much because they aren’t measurable. Yet they have power as marketing tools because they sound good to us. They appeal to our basic instinct to do the right thing. These are great words that have been robbed of their power by fast fashion.

Here are a few examples:

green: only means something when we are referring to the color.

eco-friendly: don’t even get me started..literally means nothing but sure sounds nice

natural: sounds appealing, but means nothing.

transparency: this one seems great, right? and I’m kinda angry that fast fashion has ruined this one. But unfortunately H&M and other retailers might claim to have transparency within their supply chain, but they don’t have any visibility into subcontractors, fabric/trim suppliers, dyes houses, etc. Often their greatest visibility into their factories lies within the the final steps of manufacturing, with no knowledge of everything that came before.

conscious: This one means little, but it works its magic on us because it implies that we the customer are “conscious” because we are making these thoughtful choices that make us superior to everyone else who is making (I guess) the “unconscious” choice against the environment?

recycled: that’s great, but is the item also recyclable, or is this the end of the line?

fair wage: not the same as a living wage!

and why if I told you that H&M and all of the other fast fashion retailers are using “sustainable” and “sustainability” incorrectly?

In 1987, the United Nations defined sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” And while yes, reducing our use of natural resources and protecting our oceans, soil, air, plants, and animals are part of that…so is providing a healthy, safe, productive life for all humans. That means eliminating poverty, providing health care, education, equal rights, access to good food and dignified employment that pays a living wage. When all humans are thriving, the planet benefits.

Unfortunately fast fashion brands neglect to address the wages and working conditions of all of the humans making, shipping, and selling our clothing. Workers across the supply chain, from the fabric mill to the factory making the polybags for shipping are often being paid very little and working under terrible conditions. Retail workers don’t make a living wage and often find themselves the target of harassment and abuse. The same goes for warehouse workers.

The deals deals deals of fast fashion are made possible by two key elements of the business model that guarantee it can never be sustainable: overconsumption (selling us as much as possible, as often as possible) and exploitation (including low wages, wage theft, and dangerous/miserable working conditions).

It’s cheap because someone (lots of people) didn’t get paid.

Another thing that is a common trick of greenwashing that is honestly the most DIFFICULT of all of the red flags of greenwashing to spot: potentially fraudulent certifications and data. And earlier this year, an investigation by Quartz revealed that H&M had been knowingly sharing incorrect data that made their so-called “conscious” collections appear to be more beneficial for the planet than they actually were. I recommend checking out the full article “Quartz investigation: H&M showed bogus environmental scores for its clothing.” I’ll share it in the show notes. But here are some of the major callouts:

H&M gets its info for its environmental scores from Higg Sustainabililty Profiles. This data is put together by the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, an industry group run and funded by an array of retailers and manufacturers, including Amazon, Urban Outfitters, Walmart, Kohls, American Eagle, Asos, Everlane, and All Birds. Interestingly enough every retailer I just listed has been busted for unethical behavior regarding worker treatment, wage theft, and order cancellations in the wake of the pandemic. These brands have also been engaging in a lot of egregious greenwashing, just like H&M. So we’re already off to a really bad start here, right? These are scores created by an organization funded and run by companies who have a stake in making their products appeal as “sustainable” as possible in order to drive sales. This is the equivalent of my cat Hutch handing me a study conducted by Brenda and him that says that Temptations (their favorite brand of treats) are healthier than the grain free cat food I normally give them. Nope, not gonna buy it!

So back to these Higg Sustainability Profiles. They are created ostensibly to give customers a clearer view of the environmental impact of the items they purchase. The profiles take into account how much water and fossil fuels were used to create the materials in a piece of clothing. And this data is compared to more conventional fabrics and methods of producing fabrics.

Here’s where it went wrong for H&M: on the website, when a product used 30% MORE water than its conventional counterpart, it was shown to use 30% LESS water. The claims H&M were making were the opposite of the data from the Higg website.

In fact, Quartz discovered that H&M had hardcoded its website to show only the positive version of this data. Basically the code would reverse “more” water to “less” water.

On the day that Quartz did its investigation, of the 630 items on the website that included Higg info, 136 of the items showed incorrect data, making them appear to be better for the planet than they really were. Only 11 items showed any reduced impact. Okay, so 630-136-11 is 483. And about a third of those showed very, very minor reduced impact. The remaining 300 or so? No difference in impact from conventional methods. Yet they were all being marketed as more “sustainable” and “transparent.”

After being called out on this, H&M pulled down all of the Higg data from its website. The company is still using some misleading terminology, like referring to a garment made of a mixture of polyester and recycled cotton as a more sustainable option.

The SAC–Sustainable Apparel Coalition–is reworking its Higg Index scoring after years of criticism. George Harding-Rolls of the Changing Markets Foundation has been a long time critic of the Higg Index and he gets down to brass tacks about the whole thing, telling Quartz:

“The SAC has been providing green paint to paint a very very dirty industry an eco-shade for 10 years, and haven’t really shown any measurable results in that time.”

So hearing all of this can be very depressing, infuriating, demoralizing…all the bad feelings all at once. But here’s something I want you to think about: greenwashing wouldn’t exist if fast fashion wasn’t afraid of losing its customers. They wouldn’t be dumping all of these resources into creating an entire coalition with its own scoring system if they weren’t seeing the writing on the wall: people want something better. We want something better. The problem is this: rather than taking all of that money and time and using it to actually change the industry, to change consumer behaviors, to make better product that lasts longer and doesn’t rely on human exploitation and waste of natural resources to create, the industry decided to spend it to create fake sustainability indexes and certifications.

No matter what all of these fast fashion brands are telling you on the beautiful neutral-toned (with a hint of green) corporate responsibility pages within their website, none of these brands are doing anything sustainable or life changing. Doing that would mean completely dismantling their business models and starting over.

It must be scary to be a big fast fashion executive in 2022. To know that the writing is on the wall, that more and more of us are seeing it, and that we are rejecting all of the false promises and bullshit of buying as much stuff as possible as often as possible.

They hear us. They know we are coming for them. And they know that we are only going to get louder and more powerful as we share knowledge and welcome more people to the movement.

Okay, after all of that….let’s jump into my conversation with Anna about the secondhand industry in Poland!

Coming Soon!

Thanks again to Anna–who has been a regular contributor to the Clotheshorse community for years now–for taking the time to talk to me. It felt so good to have a conversation with her. Dustin and I are already talking about going to Poland next year! Who wants to join us? In the mean time, you can find Anna on instagram as @the.witch.of.witchwood, where she shares all kinds of amazing outfits and illustrations. She is a woman of many incredible talents!

That’s all for today…it’s time to turn the air conditioning back on in our house. I’ll be back two weeks from now. I’m taking next weekend off because this Wednesday, August 10 is my birthday…and while I’ll be flying home from a business trip on my birthday, Dustin and I are taking the RV down to the Gulf of Mexico next weekend to celebrate and relax.