Everything You Need to Know About the New Not My Style Ratings
For the launch of the app in March, team Not My Style rated over 100 of the UK’s biggest high street brands. After lots of great feedback and requests, we’ve added a further 40 including athleisure brands Adidas, Ellesse and Puma, alongside online retailers Nobody’s Child and PrettyLittleThing.
What is Not My Style?
Not My Style is an app that tells you how much your favourite fashion brands share about the women and men who make our clothes. It was created to provide an easy way to make quick, informed choices about where to shop. The app rates over 140 leading fashion brands on their supply chain transparency, including whether brands disclose information about their garment factories, how much they pay the women and men who make our clothes, and what active steps they’re taking to improve working conditions. The rating system is simple — red (stop), amber (think), and green (shop).
Here’s the top 5 things you need to know about our latest update:
1. Green rated Not My Style brands are doing lots of really encouraging things.
Ellesse, Arket and Noisy May are amongst the new additions of Green rated Not My Style brands. Since we started rating brands there’s been a really promising increase in how much information is being publicly shared, which will hopefully continue.
Brands including H&M and M&S are not only disclosing their full supplier list, but are also showing that they are taking active steps to ensure a full living wage is paid to staff in their factories. By providing information that shows how they are paying a living wage, they are going beyond a simple statement acknowledging that a living wage is important. Additionally, we also need brands to illustrate how they are actively implementing things like ensuring there’s no forced or child labour, and that workers have the right to organise, amongst other indicators of how they are improving the lives of garment workers.
2. Brands and consumers are acknowledging how important supplier lists are.
Since our app release in March, a number of big brands have joined the likes of Green rated brands H&M and M&S by disclosing their supplier lists, including ASOS and Gap. This is a big first step to becoming more transparent, and one of our key indicators to measure how much information a brand is sharing. By sharing a supplier list, brands are opening themselves up to accountability, which in turn encourages them to improve their supply chains and sourcing practices. It’s a big first step on the journey to transparency!
3. Brands still need to be doing more to get a Green rating.
Although there are a lot of really positive changes, with more brands sharing an increasing amount of information, many still need to do a lot more! With our new batch of ratings, we revisited the existing brands to make sure we weren’t missing anything. Through doing this, a few formerly Green brands have moved to Amber. This is because brands need to keep raising their game — as others share more information, they also need to keep sharing.
Offering an accurate picture of a brand’s transparency is extremely important. Not My Style is all about consumer facing transparency, and only rates brands on information that the general public can access. However, our ratings are subject to change — this is because the ranking is a relative scale and not absolute: by sharing more data, brands can move up or down vis-a-vis each other. The hope is that through using Not My Style shoppers will want more information, and brands will want to give more information, which will then have a positive effect on the lives of the women and men who make our clothes.
4. Our ratings aren’t a tick box, and being a Green rated brand isn’t everything.
Whilst Green rated Not My Style brands are the best available options on the high street for transparency, their achievements are being acknowledged by us in a relative way. As mentioned above, progress is not stationary, and brands that wish to achieve recognition for their good work must evolve. Our ratings aren’t a tick box standard, they’re a step on a journey towards full accountability.
5. We’ve added some amazing new star stores!
A growing area of Not My Style (again, thanks to the suggestions and requests of our wonderful users) is our Not My Style star stores, listed exclusively on the app. Our star stores are sustainable brands, independent boutiques and sellers, charity and vintage shops, that are fully transparent and as sustainable as they possibly can be. We have a really diverse and great mix of new star stores, including Wear the Walk, Adrenna, Po-Zu, Mary’s Living and Giving shops, Duvet Days and Ethical Collection. We highly recommend checking out the Not My Style app for more unique and wonderful alternatives to the high street!
You can find out more about Not My Style, and read more in-depth information on our rating system. You can also download Not My Style now from the App Store (coming soon to Android). Got a question or comment? Tweet us @notmystyluk.
