Premium Denim Brand, 7 For All Mankind Wants To Help Mother Earth With Their New Sustainable Fashion Initiative

7 For All Mankind is known for their denim, and now the brand is known for their socially responsible denim with their ambitious initiative, ‘Sustainable For All Mankind’. For All Mankind by name, and by nature it would seem.

“As the world begins to define a new normal, it is now more important than ever to focus on critical initiatives that will positively impact and help sustain the world. The ‘Sustainable for All Mankind’ initiative takes immediate action to help improve our materials and manufacturing processes and creates a new go-forward approach to help our products and practices become more earth-friendly. This program is a culmination of a 9-month extensive review of our materials, supply chain, internal operations, and processes, and offers a transparent look at our new approach while continuing to offer premium product and innovation that distinguishes our brand.” Suzanne Silverstein, President of 7 For All Mankind

A new environmental platform which launched this month, the brand wants a whopping 80% of their product to have sustainable properties by 2023 and they’ve introduced transparency to track progress in materials and manufacturing too.

In short, expect their famous denim (and other clothing offerings) to be crafted from sustainable materials using practices that will reduce the impact on the planet.

Suzanne Silverstein the President of 7 For All Mankind sheds more light onto the initiative and their sustainable strategy.

Felicity Carter: Tell us about this new sustainable commitment…

Suzanne Silverstein: We owe it to the planet and to our customers to deliver compelling and innovative product that is produced in an ecologically responsible way. We have developed a comprehensive roadmap so that we are clear about our deliverables internally, so that our team can execute. We are working closely with our external partners to clearly message our expectations, and how we are measuring deliverables, so that we can all collectively win. The win is to reduce our footprint on the planet, and that our reduction can be quantified.

FC: How long has it been in the making?

SS: I joined the company in late June 2019, and knew right away that I wanted to tackle sustainability. There was tremendous desire by the 7FAM team to develop more sustainable product, but I felt we needed a clear roadmap, and more importantly, guardrails and measurements. I wanted our efforts to be quantifiable. We hired a sustainability consultant, Michael Sadowsky, and I created an internal task force. We had our first meeting with Michael on October 3, 2019 and finalized our work with him in March 2020. From these task force efforts, we have a clear protocol, a checklist review process with all 7FAM suppliers and manufacturers with a focus on the implementation of third-party certified tools, techniques and practices that measure our environmental footprint.

FC: What are the core pillars of the strategy?

SS: There are 3 core pillars, Materials, Manufacturing and In-house Footprint. 

Materials: Improving the environmental profile of the materials 7FAM uses. Materials will be vetted based on adhering to 1 or more attributes of a set of strict criteria.

Manufacturing: Reducing the environmental impact from producing products in mills and factories, focusing on improvements with energy, water, air emissions, and waste chemicals. 

With both pillars above, the emphasis is on measuring against some of the best tools that the industry has right now. In manufacturing it is the HIGG FEM index, ISO 14001, Oeko tex 100, and Bluesign certification. For materials, also HIGG MSI and BCI cotton. 

In-House Footprint: Our headquarters in L.A. in LEED certified, but we will continue to make improvements with plastic usage and packaging.

FC: When will this kick into action?

SS: We will officially launched the platform to the public on May 7, but we have been working with the information from our early task force meetings for months. We are very committed to delivering on our claims and more, and hope to overachieve our 2023 set targets.

Shop the brand on their website, in the 7 For All Mankind retail locations in America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, as well as luxury department stores globally.