Why Finding Sustainable Lingerie Is Harder Than You Might Think

Sustainability is one of the most loaded words in fashion — and one of the emptiest. It can mean almost anything, and therefore mean nothing.

I want to be upfront here. We are a people who produce. We use resources to eat, to dress ourselves, to build the places we live, and we can never fully give back to the planet in the same measure we take from it. What we can do is be deliberate about minimizing our impact — and find ways to give something back that counteracts it.

So when I talk about sustainability, I’m not talking about a “green” label that designers can stitch into a garment. I’m talking about thought and intention behind every decision, at every stage of the process. Not an afterthought. Not something leaned on just for marketing. A practice. A philosophy. A way of working that can be conscious while also allowing elevated creation to flourish.

I’m not going to sit here and pretend
that making clothes could ever be truly sustainable,
but there are steps designers can take to be more mindful.

Why Lingerie Is a Harder Problem Than Most Categories

Several years ago, as part of my honors thesis at the Fashion Institute of Technology, I spent a semester studying a single question: what specific challenges in sustainability does the intimate apparel industry face, that other categories don’t?

The first is stretch. Most modern lingerie is built on stretch fibers, and in the years since I wrote that thesis, the materials have only gotten cheaper. They perform for a short while, and then the elasticity falls out of the fabric. The piece begins to deteriorate. It shows wear far sooner than it should. They also breathe far less than natural fibers, against skin that should be getting air.

Stretch creates a second problem once the garment’s life is over: blended, elasticated materials are much harder to recycle or upcycle — to remake into something new — than natural ones. They cost more energy and more money to process.

And here is the part I want to be careful about, because it usually gets aimed at the wrong person: shoppers have been trained to expect stretch in everything. That isn’t your fault. The integration of stretch into all categories of clothing happened slowly, over about two decades, as underwear drifted closer and closer to activewear — and it happened because stretch can be cheaper, more forgiving, and lets a brand sell one garment to many body types without the cost of developing real fit. It was a business decision before it was a preference. But once everyone expected it, the whole industry stayed dependent on it.

What Testing Keeps Finding

The second challenge is chemistry, and it’s the one I think about most. Lingerie sits closer to the body than almost anything else we wear, against the most intimate areas of the skin, every single day. That is where the name intimate apparel comes from.

For my thesis I read the testing that existed on this, and it is worse than most people assume. In a study published in the Journal of Environmental Science and Health (2017), researchers bought 120 garments from American department stores — Calvin Klein, Hanes, Jockey, Victoria’s Secret and others — and tested every one in a lab. They found heavy metals above regulated limits: chromium, lead, nickel, zinc, copper. Four samples exceeded the legal limit for arsenic. These were trace amounts, and the authors were careful to say so — but they were equally clear that chronic, long-term contact is associated with allergenic skin reactions like dermatitis, and at the far end with liver damage and pulmonary congestion.

What surprised me was where it came from. It was not the synthetics. The cotton garments carried the highest concentrations of toxic elements — higher than the nylon and the polyester — and the darkest, most vibrant colours were worse than the pale ones. That points at the dyeing and finishing rather than the fibre itself: the carcinogenic amines, the metals, the chlorine bleaching, the free formaldehyde, the biocides and softeners, and the antimicrobial, odour and water-repellent finishes that all get applied after the fabric already exists.

And you have almost no way of checking. When I was researching this, more than 80,000 chemicals were in circulation in consumer products; the United States had restricted eleven of them, the European Union around 1,300 (Better Safe Than Sorry, 2018). Both numbers have moved since. The shape of the problem has not — and no American manufacturer is required to list what a garment has been treated with. That is why I lean on certification rather than labels.

In trace amounts, on their own, you might reasonably set these findings aside. What I think about is the accumulation — lingerie added to everything else in modern life that carries these compounds, from detergents to what’s in our food. It adds up.

We’re literally the first contact
every day to a person’s body.

I don’t raise this to frighten anyone. I raise it because, as a lingerie designer, I believe I carry a slightly greater responsibility than most. I am making the first thing that touches a person’s body in the morning. That’s why I lean on certifications like OEKO-TEX (tested for over 1,000 harmful substances and safe for human health) and GOTS (requires a minimum of 70% organic fibers and follows the entire supply chain, including fair wages and safe working conditions) when I source.

The $80 Bra That Used to Last Ten Years

You’ve probably noticed brands telling you to buy less and buy better. What almost none of them mention is that a lot of them have quietly made “better” harder to find.

When production scales past a certain point, it stops being about how well a piece is made and starts being about how large an order you can place for a larger profit margin. Pieces get made cheaply, they wear out faster, and you find yourself replacing them sooner. That is the engine of fast fashion, and it has crept into lingerie just as it has everywhere else.

What troubles me most is watching long-standing names lower their own standards. I once bought a beautiful set from a luxury lingerie designer I’ve genuinely admired and discovered that they had glued the lace onto the net, instead of stitching it. This was on a piece carrying a hefty price no less. It started peeling off soon after I purchased it. The net was also such a poor quality that it started ripping after one wear. When luxury goods start doing that, that’s when you realize the problem of prioritizing revenue over the product quality is becoming a more widespread problem.

I recently walked through another boutique I’d loved for years and felt the bras under its own label going flimsy, the kind that won’t survive a year, still selling for seventy or eighty dollars. A decade ago, that same money bought you a bra that lasted five to even ten years. I have pieces in my own collection I’ve worn for more than a decade; the elastic is only now beginning to wear out. The difference comes down to the materials you choose, and whether someone took the time to make it well.

That, to me, is a sustainability question as much as a quality one — and it’s the one the intimate apparel industry talks about least.

You don’t glue lace onto a set,
especially when you’re paying
a high price for it.

What You’re Actually Paying For

I think one reason this conversation stalls is that almost nobody explains the money. So let me try.

When you buy a pair of underwear for seven dollars, that seven dollars has a great deal of work to do. It has to cover the team who designed it, the fabric, the elastic, the trim, the person who sewed it, the factory, the shipping across an ocean, the warehouse, the store, the marketing that brought you there, and a profit for everyone in between. Divide seven dollars across all of that. There are cents left for the material. There is somewhere around a dollar fifty for the person at the machine.

The only way that number works is if the material is cheap and the labor is cheap — and both of those decisions show up in your drawer within a year.

Then there’s the math almost nobody does. An eighty-dollar bra you replace every year costs you eight hundred dollars over ten years, and puts ten bras into the dumpster. One well-made piece you keep for ten years costs you once, and minimizes your waste.

I won’t pretend that buying a higher price point, higher quality bra isn’t difficult in today’s economy, but if you can buy less or buy used and keep it longer, that is genuinely the most sustainable investment available to you.

The Biggest Misconception About Sustainable Lingerie

If I could correct one belief about sustainable lingerie, it would be this: that recycled synthetic fibers are the answer.

I understand why it’s appealing — recycled sounds like the end of the conversation. But it isn’t. Just because a fabric was recycled doesn’t mean it took less energy to make than something else, and recycled synthetics are often lower in quality, used in pieces that aren’t especially well made to begin with. They still shed microfibers into the water. And if the garment doesn’t last, recycling its fibers was beside the point.

I believe the better answer is natural fibers, made well, made to last, made to be repaired.

If the product isn’t going to last,
then what’s the point
of even making the item?

How to Spot Greenwashing

If there is one thing I want you to take from this, it’s how to see through the marketing. So many companies use words like “eco-friendly” and “sustainable” with very little behind them. Honestly, it’s hard to claim those words at all unless you’re working close to zero waste. I typically lead with the word “conscious,” and occasionally “sustainable,” but I’m very aware there’s a fine line between claiming it and what it promises. Here is what I watch for in other brands to gauge how seriously they take their sustainability efforts.

Heavy advertising, little detail

When a brand markets its sustainability loudly but says almost nothing about how — what materials, what process, what supply chain — be cautious. Transparency is the real signal. How open is the company actually willing to be?

The single green product

A large company will release one item made from regenerated material — a single sneaker, one style — and build a campaign around it. If a brand has the resources to do that for one product, it can do it for more. When you never see that effort scale into the rest of the collection, that isn’t sustainability. That’s marketing. For a small label, real material development is genuinely cost-prohibitive until you reach a certain size, so I hold the giants to a different standard than the independents.

A green line, and a troubling supply chain

Some brands push a “sustainable” collection of recycled fabrics while facing serious complaints about how they treat their workers and factories. A recycled fabric does not cancel that out. It’s a red flag.

Recycled, but worse

A recycled mesh or fabric still sheds microfibers — and it’s often lower in quality, chosen so a brand can put recycled on the label even though the piece won’t last as long. A material that wears out faster isn’t doing the planet any favors. It’s arguably less sustainable.

My honest conclusion is that I’m not sure anyone can truly call themselves eco-friendly. But you can tell when a brand is being conscious — paying attention, working to make better choices, willing to show its work. Watch what a company does, not what it says.

With the incredible number of options we have today, of lesser and lesser quality and respect for the environment, it is on us as consumers to make as informed, smart purchasing decisions as we can.

How to Shop for Lingerie That Lasts

I’d rather send you away from this with something useful than with a shopping link. Almost none of what follows requires buying from me — most of it you can do in any store, at any price.

Start with the fiber label

Before you buy

• Read the fiber content before the price tag.It’s usually on a small tag in the side seam. A garment that’s mostly synthetic stretch can be a garment with a short life — and as the testing above showed, brand and price tell you very little about what is in the fabric.
• Test the elastic with your hands.Pull it, and compare it against other pieces on the rack. You can feel the difference between elastic that will hold and elastic that won’t. Buy the one that will.
• Look for OEKO-TEX or GOTS — at any price point.This isn’t a luxury signal. It’s a safety one, and it appears on a lot of affordable brands. If you take only one thing from this piece, take this.
• Look past the fabric to the company.Fair Trade, Cradle to Cradle, or certified B-Corp status signals that a business is being held to standards on workers’ rights and on both social and environmental practice — not just on materials. Or if they are a smaller design house, look to the brand’s story and learn more about where they produce.
• Ask “how,” not “whether.""Is this sustainable?” gets you a marketing answer. “What is this made of, where was it made, and who made it?” gets you a real one — or silence, which is also an answer.
• Don’t buy it just because it’s cheap or on sale.Especially from a fast-fashion giant like SHEIN, Temu, Zara, or H&M. A sale price is not a reason, and those prices are only possible because something upstream was cut.

While you own it

• Wash cool, and wash less than you think.Use a gentle detergent. Most lingerie needs washing far less often than people assume, and cooler water also releases fewer microfibers — so it does two jobs at once.
• Skip the dryer.Heat is what kills elastic. This single habit is the difference between two years and ten.
• Lay flat, don’t wring.Press the water through a towel and lay the piece flat to dry. If you must use a machine, use a mesh bag on a delicate cycle.

When something goes wrong

• Repair before you replace.A popped underwire channel, a stretched strap, a small seam — these are twenty-minute fixes for a tailor, and they can buy years.
• Ask whether the brand repairs its own pieces.The answer tells you how long they expect the garment to last. We take FERN pieces back for repair with a small mending fee, and I’d rather mend something than sell you a replacement.

The one that matters most

• Buy fewer, and buy the ones you will actually reach for.The most sustainable piece in your drawer is the one already in it.

What Sustainability Really Asks of Us

I can’t hand you a certificate that proves a garment is sustainable, because no such garment exists. What I can offer is an intention you can trace — in the fiber, in the construction, in the people who made it, in the box it arrives in. Sustainability, to me, was never a label. It’s a practice, and an honest one means admitting where it falls short while doing the real work everywhere you can.

When you reach into your drawer for something to wear closest to your skin, you deserve to know it was made with thought: for your body, for the people who made it, and for the world it came from. That standard is the same one that made me build FERN for every body in the first place.

If you’d like to see what that looks like from the inside — the fabrics, the factories, the places I still fall short — that’s what I’ll be writing about next.

Sources

Every figure in this piece comes from one of the following.

1. Nguyen & Saleh, “Exposure of women to trace elements through the skin by direct contact with underwear clothing,” Journal of Environmental Science and Health, Part A (2017). doi.org/10.1080/10934529.2016.1221212 Supports: 120 garments from American department stores · chromium, lead, nickel, zinc and copper above regulated limits · four samples over the arsenic limit · cotton carrying the highest concentrations of toxic elements, and darker colours worse than pale.
2. MacKendrick, N. Better Safe Than Sorry. University of California Press, 2018. Supports: the 80,000 chemicals in circulation · eleven restricted in the United States against roughly 1,300 banned in the European Union · no US requirement to disclose chemical treatments on a garment.
3. Clausius, F. “Analysis and Evaluation of Sustainability Issues in American Intimate Apparel.” Honors thesis, Fashion Institute of Technology, 2019. Supports: the stretch-fibre and recyclability findings, and the wider research this piece draws on.

Frequently Asked Questions

FERN New York creates conscious, gender-inclusive luxury lingerie, handmade in our New York atelier.
Designed to be worn, honored and treasured.