Michael Stars Earns B Corp Certification
One Los Angeles-based brand has earned enough stars to secure B Corp status—and it joins a growing number of companies trying to lessen their environmental impacts in the City of Angels.
Michael Stars announced Monday that it had joined a growing community of fashion brands as a certified B Corp.
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The newly crowned do-gooder scored 97.2 out of 200 possible points, higher than other brands that boast the certification, like Ganni, Athleta, Good American and Marine Layer.
Suzanne Lerner, Michael Stars’ CEO and co-founder, said the brand has led with purpose since its founding in 1986.
“We were a B Corp before there was a B Corp,” she said.
The company decided to begin the process of officially becoming a B Corp after seeing other brands, like Eileen Fisher and Patagonia, doing the same, Lerner said.
Eighty percent of the apparel sold by the brand is produced locally in Los Angeles. That, Lerner said, is because she feels strongly about garment workers’ rights, even though producing that way comes at a higher cost.
“It is at a cost, so the profitability isn’t there like it is for other companies. It’s tougher to make a living, but the company—everybody on our team is dedicated to this,” she said.
The remaining 20 percent of Michael Stars’ merchandise is made in China and India, Lerner said. The majority of the garments not made in L.A. comes from China, but the brand has begun shifting its attention toward India, too.
The brand manufactures linen products and sweaters in China. Lerner said Michael Stars relies on India for woven dresses and athleticwear shirtings.
In the back of her mind, though, she hopes workers’ rights matter to manufacturing partners.
“We have people that watch our production over there, but I’m just hoping they’re watching as carefully as we can watch things here [in Los Angeles]. We’re here, we’re on the ground, we can see working conditions. We have QC people and people out in the factories all the time, which makes me sleep at night better, because I feel like I know that people are being treated well,” she said.
And Michael Stars’ concern for societal wellbeing doesn’t stop with garment workers, Lerner said. The company has had a foundation that mentors and funds organizations run by women, people of color and grassroots organizers.
Lerner said, going forward, Michael Stars will make an increased effort to volunteer time in the local community.
Though people considerations are a major piece of a B Corp certification, environmental responsibility matters deeply, too.
Michael Stars’ primarily domestic production helps reduce its carbon footprint, Lerner said.
The company has also adopted greener packaging by partnering with fellow B Corp Better Packaging Co., which rescues ocean-bound plastic from Southeast Asia for reuse.
And it works to avert textile waste, one of fashion’s mounting problems, by turning scraps into blankets and throws.
But Lerner, an industry veteran, knows the work never stops when making progress toward true sustainability. She said new ideas of how the brand can improve pop up all the time—and, when feasible, she is willing to take a risk to embrace them.
One of the company’s main goals is to use more sustainable fabrics. It already has a 20-year relationship with American cotton producer Supima. For Lerner, adding next-generation materials to the mix could be a positive step forward.
“We want to keep adopting new fabrics, and keep pushing the design department—’I need you to find me recycles, find me upcycles,'” she said.
The brand has a number of other circularity and sustainability-based efforts in place.
Resale has grown in popularity among consumers, and efforts to reuse items already in circulation annually redirects billions of pounds of textile waste from landfills.
Michael Stars has a partnership with ThredUp that allows consumers to give a second life to the brand’s garments; thus far, the two have diverted 91,000 items from landfill. The reason so many of the garments can be resold, Lerner said, is in the quality.
Though ThredUp is a popular name in the resale space, Recurate, another resale operating system, has begun to make a dent in the growing secondhand market.
The Washington, D.C.-based company recently inked a deal with Los Angeles’ Nation Ltd, a contemporary women’s wear label.
Nation Ltd is using the Michael Kors partner so that it can sell stock unfit for the first market because of minor flaws. The program with Recurate also enables customers to engage in peer-to-peer resale, where sellers recoup 100 percent of the profit from their sale in the form of a Nation Ltd gift card.
That plays well with consumers and results in higher brand loyalty for Nation Ltd, said Wilson Griffin, Recurate’s co-founder.
“Assuming that you’re a loyal shopper, you will get more value by selling directly through this program than you would through any other avenues where there’s going to be some sort of middle person or entity that’s taking a cut,” Griffin told Sourcing Journal.
Though it’s too early yet to know the true impact of the partnership, the early results have been promising, Griffin said.
The company also has partnerships in place with several other L.A.-area players, like Clare V. and Southern California’s Outerknown.
“The most sustainable product you can buy is a product that’s already been manufactured. It’s already been owned once; there’s no incremental water usage or GHG emissions that comes with a used product going to a new owner,” said Griffin. “We know people like to try new things and to refresh their wardrobe every once in a while. That’s totally okay, but let’s do it in the most sustainable way we can; it doesn’t always have to be a new item. There are so many great items that are already out there circulating that can be just as rewarding to acquire.”
