Sustainable Fashion Through The Eyes of Young Consumers

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, recent Penn State graduate Jordan Pietrafitta turned her Schreyer Honors College thesis into a real business. Once a theoretical advertising campaign centered on sustainability, EARTHLY: For the Planet launched as Pietrafitta’s eco-friendly clothing line in July.

Upon completing her thesis, she had a persistent feeling that she must make EARTHLY a reality.

“I started thinking about sewing items from scratch and had the time to dabble in it over quarantine,” said Pietrafitta. “I knew that if I was going to be selling clothing items, I wanted them to be good quality and made to last.”

After watching tutorials on Youtube, Pietrafitta put her sewing machine to use. At her home in West Chester, she began repurposing unwanted articles of clothing. Within months, she was designing the brand’s website, hiring models to be photographed, and managing an Instagram account, besides upcycling clothes to comprise the EARTHLY line.

Pietrafitta said she wants EARTHLY to operate off donations. This way, clothing that would have ended up in the trash otherwise could now be transformed into new pieces.

“It’s a good way to get people in the community involved in sustainability,” Pietrafitta said. “Those who donate know that their clothing will be put to good use and won’t just be getting ready to be shipped off to a landfill somewhere.”

While many young consumers express a desire to reduce their environmental impact, the majority are unaware of sustainability as it relates to their own clothing consumption, according to research conducted in 2019.

A group of professors at Colorado State University studied this behavior-intention gap. Particularly, they wanted to understand the reasons why young adults chose to or didn’t choose to practice sustainable fashion habits.

The research was published as part of the “Sustainable Production and Consumption” journal on Elsevier, an information and data website. According to the article, researchers held focus groups with 41 undergraduate and graduate Colorado State students to collect quantitative data. Participants were asked questions about their attitudes toward general sustainability, followed by ones more specifically related to clothing.

The article also lists eight behaviors that researchers developed based on existing research about sustainable fashion. Some of these behaviors included buying used clothes, buying clothes less often, and getting clothes mended or repaired to prolong their wear. When presented with the list, participants indicated their likelihood of engaging in each behavior and provided further reasoning behind their ratings.

One of the study’s five authors, Colorado State professor Ruoh-Nan Yan, said the discrepancy between young adults’ intentions and actions exists for reasons related to price, knowledge, and accessibility of buying environmentally friendly products.

“We found that it’s the cost, the not knowing exactly whether a product is eco-friendly or not, and not knowing where to buy these kinds of clothing items that mainly contribute to the gap,” Yan said.

When it comes to her own business, Pietrafitta uses EARTHLY’s website to explain how the process of upcycling clothing achieves sustainability. Each product she lists for sale contains a description of how much fabric, in ounces, consumers would save from ending up in landfills with their purchase. She also posts on social media platforms like Instagram and Tiktok, where followers gain a behind-the-scenes look at her creation of EARTHLY’s apparel.

The behavior-intention gap remained apparent, although, for Penn State health policy administration junior Angelina Lucarelli. While Lucarelli said that she brings her own reusable thermos to coffee shops and bags groceries with reusable totes, sustainability doesn’t influence her clothing purchases.

“When I buy clothing, it’s cheaper and more convenient for me to order from larger corporations like Forever 21,” said Lucarelli.

Yan said environmentally friendly products tend to be more expensive, which can be a major factor for young adults who have yet to achieve financial stability. Over 50% of the study’s participants reported a tendency to buy from fast fashion brands, which often target Generation Z consumers. Defining characteristics of the fast fashion industry include offering low prices and rapidly producing clothes that reflect the latest trends.

For Penn State kinesiology senior Rose Mcdaid, she said the ability to recognize this industry’s harm to the environment is something she learned through watching Netflix documentaries and doing her own research.

According to Yan, the release of documentaries such as “The True Cost” and “Riverblue,” is part of the reason why the issue of clothing overconsumption has gained attention over the past few years. For this reason, she believes society is moving in a good direction toward bridging the gap.

“I learned a lot more about fast fashion brands and how much clothing we consume,” said Mcdaid. “I became a lot more conscious about it, which is why I bought from [EARTHLY]; because upcycled clothing is local and sustainable.”

Since EARTHLY’s launch, Mcdaid has purchased two shirts from the line. In addition to her support of Pietrafitta’s business, she said that she likes to go thrift shopping and is conscious of donating her clothes to ensure that her individual clothing cycle is as circular as possible.

Pietrafitta added that while shopping at thrift stores is another way to benefit the environment, she learned that a lot of the clothing in these stores ultimately gets thrown out. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that 84% of abandoned clothes are sent to landfills or incinerated.

“I made it a point with EARTHLY to not go out and buy clothing from thrift stores specifically to upcycle and upcharge,” said Pietrafitta. “I don’t believe that’s how sustainable fashion should operate.”

Instead, she offers a 20% discount code to EARTHLY customers who have donated more than five used clothing items to the line. Moving forward, she said that she hopes to implement a rewards program where customers can earn additional discounts based on the number of donations that they’ve made.

“I’m definitely the kind of person who dreams big,” Pietrafitta said, “I'd love for EARTHLY to become a giant brand to spread the message, on a larger scale, of how important it is to eliminate as much waste from landfills as possible.”