Asked to define radical transparency, Preysman tells Wardrobe Crisis: “For us it means there’s nothing that we hide from the customer. If you look at a typical product online…there’s just a price (maybe it’s on sale, maybe it’s not) then it says ‘imported’. You receive it and the label says ‘Made in Vietnam, or whatever. That’s all you know.”
Everlane is different, he says, because: “We tell you the cost of the material, the labour, transportation, duties, every bit of it, then we tell you our profit. What it does is build trust, because we are accountable to the customer.”
Andrew Morgan’s film, The True Cost, has centred in the public consciousness the idea that someone always pays the cost of too cheap. That someone is usually the garment worker. But who pays the cost of too expensive? It’s an interesting question, especially in the context of fashion’s increasing speed and disposability. Preysman says it’s the customer. What do you think?
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