8 Ethical Boutiques to Hit Up for Holiday Shopping
Getting gifts is awesome, but getting gifts for your friends and family? That’s a tough one. Even tougher still is flexing your gifting prowess while making sure that everything is ethically sourced and conflict-free. After all, what good is holiday cheer if it makes someone else’s life miserable in the process?
This season, we got you. Stay ahead of the holiday gift game with our handy resource on boutiques you can hit up for all of your ethical and sustainable gifting needs!
Mother-daughter team Nea and Mary Savoca founded Ash & Rose out of the desire to change their approach to shopping to better fit in with their personal ethos of living socially and environmentally conscious lives. Nea designs the Ash & Rose private label collection while Mary curates the designer collections found in the shop, and everything is selected with their three core values of sustainability, fair labor, and female empowerment in mind. You can shop their romantic and whimsical collection online or in-person at their fab South End location in Boston.
One of our favorite brands blurring the line between eco-friendly and fashion is Mr. Larkin, an eco-conscious label and boutique that goes beyond the athletic wear and tee-shirts commonly associated with the green fashion movement. Based in both the US and the EU, owner Casey Larkin Blond considers it a “personal responsibility” to make environmentally sensitive apparel and uses a wide array of organic and renewable textiles and dyes to craft her chic, understated designs. Along with her own eponymous seasonal collections, Mr. Larkin also offers a wide range of handpicked indie brands that share in her vision for locally made clothing that supports the environment. Get 30% off this Thanksgiving by using their coupon code TURKEY30.
Online retailer Ethica focuses on helping bridge the gap between consumers and social and environmental responsibility by contextualizing shopping within a larger narrative of global impact. Even more impressive is their dedication to finding responsibly made pieces that wouldn’t seem out of place of a high-style fashionista’s closet, echoing their belief that the more you love what you wear, the less likely it is to end up in a landfill. Along with doing business out of a LEED-certified green building in New York City, Ethica is also proud to offer eco-friendly packaging and carbon-neutral shipping. Read more about Ethica’s ethical criteria here.
Founder Rosa Ng started Young & Able as a means to showcase emerging designers to consumers who are interested in exactly what their money is supporting. Young & Able isn’t merely an online boutique, but also serves as a platform with editorial and blogger photoshoots, behind-the-scenes footage, interviews, and Q&As where makers and consumers can interact at every level. Other than offering a wide variety of products ranging from accessories to books to home goods, they’re also holding a Holiday Pop-up featuring 30 Brooklyn-based women-owned businesses! Find out more here.
Su’juk is a lifestyle boutique in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn with an emphasis on providing a mix of apparel, jewelry, home décor, and gifts. Owner Su Beyazit draws on her non-traditional Turkish-American upbringing to curate a mix of vintage and contemporary pieces from up-and-coming local designers for her clients, but perhaps the most unique part of her business is that Su’juk weaves together aspects of a traditional boutique, lounge, and salon to offer a multifaceted shopping experience where you can peruse items, get drinks, and take advantage of beautifying services such as coloring, styling, and nail care!
Initially started as an online boutique for slow fashion brands, Zady has since launched a private label collection of eco-friendly essentials that have been seen on celebrities such as Emma Watson. Zady’s focus on creating timeless essentials stems from CEO and co-founder Maxine Bédat’s emphasis on style over trends, who points out that what fashion calls ‘trends’ is actually just called ‘planned obsolescence’ in other industries. In addition to creating sustainable basics designed to last in your heart as well as your closet, Zady also recently premiered its menswear collection last month, making it possible for you to share the love beyond your female friends.
Founder Natalie Kay Smith initially started Sustainably Chic as a way for her to feature businesses that had adopted sustainable practices, then “one thing led to another and Sustainably Chic turned into something more.” In this case, that something more was being a boutique for fair-trade, organic, and upcycled clothes and goods, as well as being a blog that supports sustainable communities and small businesses. This is all in line with what Smith calls the power of “positive consumerism,” in which consumers can make a real difference by realizing the impact they can make with their own purchasing power.
As a publisher for wellness magazines such as Men’s Health and Prevention, and more notably Al Gore’s bestselling book on the global warming crisis An Inconvenient Truth, Rodale is no stranger to transforming the way the world thinks about health, wellness, and the environment. Tired of having to choose between style or products made with integrity, third generation family member and current CEO Maria Rodale took it upon herself to create Rodales.com, an online boutique with a dizzying selection of the best in organic living products, such as organic clothing, all-natural non-toxic beauty products, and eco-friendly kitchenware.
Main image via Image Catalog.
Soyo Hong
Soyo Hong is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. An artist and writer in NYC, she is a regular contributor to digital platforms such as Animal New York, Hopes&Fears, and Ratter.
