They were one of the first major brands to popularize the environmental impact of their clothing, especially cotton. They made a major push 25 years ago to educate consumers on the impacts of cotton, and switched to entirely organic cotton to help reduce those impacts.

They also helped create 1% For The Planet, were an early adopter of Bluesign, early adopters of recycled polyester for their clothing, and most recently have been promoting reselling and repairing used clothing.

I don't think its hyperbole to say that Patagonia was one of the very first companies that started the line of thinking you see in this QZ article.

On a personal note, most of my Patagonia clothing has been very durable. I have Patagonia stuff that is 20+ years old that I still use every year.

Their warranty and repair program is fantastic as well. I brought in a shirt that I had worn the elbow out of and they first offered a replacement from one in the store. They didn't have the same pattern (the shirt is probably 5 or 6 years old), so they sent it in for repair for free.

A couple of years ago they sent out a repair-mobile. They not only repaired Patagonia gear, they repaired items regardless of brand. Pretty damn cool.

http://www.latimes.com/fashion/alltherage/la-ar-patagonia-la...

$300 sweater jacket http://www.patagonia.com/product/mens-down-sweater-jacket/84...

ETA: 300$ = 25% => 1200 a month net => 1500 gross (if no state taxes) => 9.38 an hour IF we assume the completely unrealistic 40/week

Or, it means you have to save for more than a month to buy a jacket. Which, assuming it lasts a decent number of years, seems reasonable.

There is no long term if I can't survive the short term to get there. So in this situation, you buy the cheapest you can to ensure that you can at least make it to tomorrow.

Banker in Zurich with 10y experience: 12k USD/M

Engineer in Zurich with 0y experience: 8k USD/M

so far it probably sounds pretty normal for people used to SF / NY levels right?

Here's the difference:

Mc Donald's cashier in Zurich: ~3500 USD/M

Median Salary in Zurich: ~6000 USD/M

Median Salary across Switzerland: ~5600 USD/M

These give you the low and mid points of the salary spectrum. It's just much more compressed than in the US - this Patagonia jacket should be <10% of anyone's monthly salary, probably affordable for >90% of population. If it isn't, then it would be if you take social services into account that are designed to correct for such market mistakes that leave people behind in poverty.

And this is Switzerland, mind you, probably the most US-like libertarian and decentrally governed place in Europe. All of this would be affordable to Americans if your government wouldn't just pander to the big corporations and throw out money by the boatloads for insanely overpriced defence contracts.

Ah that's your problem the US economic model is punitive, not libertarian.

Personally I made ~11000 USD last year: I consider $30 to be unaffordable, that's not the same as believing I should have to consider it unaffordable.

Well, not if you have a conscience about our ecosystem.

Pretty sure this is the same jacket, in an old color:

http://www.patagonia.com/product/mens-down-sweater-jacket/84...

Generally speaking, selling cheaper is a bad business decision. It will increase costs and decrease earnings, you don't want to do that as a business. Prices should go up, not down.

In this specific case, we're talking about a niche brand appealing to an affluent audience. They milk their customers to give them good conscience. The price can't go down, that's against the business model.

(Nothing against that brand because I don't know it but it looks like one of those shitty instagram ad brands)

you can at best pick your threshold but it is almost guaranteed that somewhere in the supply chain is something awful.

I don't mean this as like a nihilistic "buy anything because it's all awful" sort of thing it's just that we live in an inescapably mutual world so there is basically no direct line or direct chain from the base inputs to the consumer outputs and somewhere in that tree is a leaf that is terrible. We can choose the best that we can but there is no perfect and its a stretch to even claim there's a good.

this is the how capitalism kills us all. we cannot be ethical and so every day we betray our ethics until we begin to betray them as a matter of course instead of a matter of necessity.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/18/world/made-usa-hard-labor-...

If you're into techier outerwear, you can look into the very popular Outlier (www.outlier.nyc) – again, you pay a premium but the textiles and sewing are made in socially responsible ways in socially responsible areas (I think).

I don't have a super comprehensive knowledge of fashion in this space though.

They're still fairly small, but growing, and recently completed a successful crowdfunding campaign. They came through the same accelerator [2] as we did with Overleaf (then known as WriteLaTeX) back in 2013.

[1] https://birdsong.london

[2] https://bethnalgreenventures.com

https://www.manomama.de

You might even enjoy it. I do.

Edit: noted your site but more resources welcome too

Edit2: was on mobile, didn't notice docs, good site

I'm not an expert and haven't spend a lot of time researching them. Happy to hear more opinions/insights.