Big Fashion is lying to you 🚩🚩🚩

This newsletter is for anyone similarly pissed off by the fashion industry greenwashing its way out of cleaning up its own mess. Instead of making less, paying more and ditching fossil fuels, brands are fobbing us off with recycled polyester and celeb sustainability ambassadors.

Caught Green Handed is an interrogation of fashion, capitalism and greenwashing, providing monthly explorations on everything from fashion’s false decarbonisation and circular “solutions” to disempowering neoliberal myths. It is rooted in the belief that systemic problems require systemic overhaul, not a slightly greener version of business as usual.

The name of this newsletter is intentionally ambiguous, a greenwashing tactic I borrowed from the industry I write about. It is both a play on words - catching brands in the act of doing something wrong - and a caution against mistaking a red flag for a positively green one. Greenwashing is dangerous because it works; it delays and distracts at a time precisely when we need the opposite and ignores the very human side of fashion.

But most of all, this newsletter is an invitation to do the catching, to reprimand the offenders and reject their promises of a beautiful, green capitalist future. Because we all deserve so much better.

Subscribe for topical essays, brand exposés and digestible action lists 🫶

Meet the author

Hi, I’m Mel, an anti-capitalist fashion campaigner working at the intersection of social and climate justice. For over half a decade, I have advocated for corporate transparency, accountability and regulation, and worked with organisations like Clean Clothes Campaign, Fashion Revolution and Changing Markets Foundation. A creative at heart, there’s nothing I love more than stealing back the same tactics misused by greenwashers to design engaging campaigns that catch the offenders green-handed. I share more of my work on Instagram if you’re interested 👀

FYI: the graphics were designed by the talented Molly Porteous!