Sustainable Fashion Editing and Proofreading Services

A jacket is labelled "made with sustainable materials" and "eco-friendly production." Neither phrase specifies which materials, in what proportion, or what standard the production process was measured against. The label could apply to a garment made with 5% recycled polyester and 95% conventional cotton, produced in a factory with no particular environmental certification at all, exactly as easily as it could apply to something genuinely different from a conventional garment. The customer paying a premium for the claim has no way to check it, because the claim was written to sound verified without actually being specific enough to verify.

We edit what fashion brands produce to substantiate a sustainability claim — material composition and sourcing disclosures, certification and standard references, supply chain and manufacturing claim substantiation, comparison content against conventional alternatives, end-of-life and recyclability information, and the responses to a customer or journalist asking what a specific claim actually means. Our editors work on the gap between a claim that sounds specific and one that actually is.

The specific, checkable claim is what separates substantiated sustainability language from language that only sounds substantiated, and its failure is a phrase vague enough that no particular fact could contradict it. Made with sustainable materials cannot be checked, because it does not say which materials, how much of the garment they make up, or against what it is being compared. We work through these so material claims state the actual composition and percentage, given that "made with recycled materials" describing a garment that is 5% recycled and 95% virgin material is technically true and functionally misleading if the percentage is not disclosed; so any certification referenced is named specifically with what it actually certifies, because "certified sustainable" naming no certifying body is not a certification a customer can verify, and a real certification's actual scope is often narrower than the marketing language built on top of it; so comparative claims state what they are being compared against, since "uses 50% less water" needs a baseline — less than what, measured how — to mean anything at all; so claims about the supply chain or labour conditions are supported with what was actually verified and by whom, rather than an assertion of ethical sourcing with no described audit or standard behind it; so end-of-life claims such as "recyclable" specify the actual conditions required, given that a garment recyclable only through a specific take-back program is a different claim from one recyclable through any household recycling stream; and so a claim that cannot currently be substantiated is not made, rather than softened into vaguer language that avoids the specific claim while implying it anyway. Claims written this way survive being checked, which is the only kind of sustainability claim worth making.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including supply chain data, certification records and sourcing information. We are editors rather than sustainability consultants, auditors or environmental scientists, and we offer no view on environmental impact, certification validity or sourcing practices. What we can do is make sure the claim says something specific enough to be checked.