Vuori, a Californian-based activewear brand, has crafted an image of sustainability and durability, sidelining claims of contributing to the world of fast, disposable fashion. Vuori leans into high-quality fabrics like DreamKnit and Duraterra as their unique way of prioritizing performance and comfort over regularly rotating trends.
Is Vuori Fast Fashion?
While Vuori isnโt seen as a fast-fashion brand, as it isn’t dropping excessive numbers of new styles weekly and isn’t operating alongside the destructive giants like Shein and Temu, its image of sustainability and durability might be deemed as part of a strategic marketing approach rather than a concrete commitment that forms the foundations of this adventurous, outdoors activewear brand.
Vuori promotes a Californian-inspired lifestyle, conjuring up images and associations of coastal environments, the outdoors, and longevity in design and durability, and while it isn’t categorized as having the symptoms of fast fashion it still fails to necessarily push the boundaries of sustainable innovation or transparent supply chain practices.
Is Vuori Sustainable?
Vuoriโs business model benefits from a sustainable โhaloโ effect whereby it seems to have built a reputation for themselves around eco-consciousness, being in touch with nature, and environmentalism. However, actionable sustainability efforts seem to be relatively modest.
Though Vuori uses some recycled and organic materials in their signature fabrics, their overall positive environmental impact doesnโt set the best example, with only around 55% of their materials classified as โpreferred fibersโ. This is a bit vague, why not just let your consumers know exactly what goes into your products?
Vuoriโs approach involves setting goals like reducing its carbon footprint and offsetting emissions, but thatโs about as far as it goes, with the company failing to go into heavy detail about its follow-through and detailed reports on these initiatives – a strategy that would be better indicative of a sustainable company.
While Vuoriโs image aligns with a sustainable ethos, its actual practices appear more limited and surface level, emphasizing corporate responsibility rather than leading innovation in a sustainable fashion.
What is Vuori Clothing? What Materials Does Vuori Use?
Vuori emphasizes comfort and performance, with popular fabrics like DreamKnit and Duraterra which include a mix of recycled materials. Their fiber guidelines prioritize lower-carbon materials, ranking them based on environmental impact. Materials labeled as Vuori Preferred Fibers are generally low-emission and tend to align with GOTS and GRS standards, but again disclose limited information on the actual constituents of these โpreferred fibersโ.
While these efforts do reflect an interest in sustainable materials, the brand’s primary focus lies within the comfort and functionality of its products, so it would be wrong to conclude its primary focus lies with eco-friendly innovation.ย
Is Vuori’s Clothing Carbon Neutral?
Vuori is certified as a climate-neutral brand, claiming to offset all emissions from its production and delivery processes. However, this certification has the potential to create a misleading perception; the brand offsets emissions mainly by supporting external projects rather than reducing its direct emissions within their supply chain, taking limited responsibility for its practices.
Vuori openly communicates that a substantial portion of its emissions originate from the supply chain. While it has set a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 42%. Its progress largely hinges on offsets rather than in-house structural changes. This approach implies that Vuori is willing to address environmental impact but lacks the rigorous action and internal responsibility so crucial for genuine carbon neutrality.
Vuoriโs End of Lifecycle Programโฆ
Vuori currently lacks a clothing recycling or take-back program, which is, in this day and age, a pretty standard initiative for brands placing sustainability at the forefront of their business model. This absence indicates a gap in efforts to promote circular fashion and system-wide responsibility, which could help reduce waste and environmental impact. Though it promotes the idea that its products โstand the test of timeโ, Vuoriโs commitment to sustainability could be strengthened by adding a recycling or take-back program to extend the life cycle of its products.
Is Vuori Ethical?
Vuori has clearly set guidelines for ethical production by requiring their supplier to follow a Vendor Code of Conduct that strictly aligns with International Labour Organisation (ILO) standards. This code prohibits child labor, forced labor, and discrimination and includes minimum standards for wages, working conditions, and health and safety.
However, Vuori doesnโt directly own its production facilities and offers minimal transparency on the enforcement of these standards. While Vuori appears committed to ethical guidelines, the absence of detailed oversight raises questions about the consistency of ethical practices across its supply chain. Furthermore, the nature of outsourcing production facilities and suppliers creates a distancing between regulatory mechanisms within the company and production and manufacturing facilities, it therefore becomes increasingly hard to regulate ethical practices, unless these facilities are local and not outsourced.
Where Are Vuoriโs Clothes Made?
The case in point here is that Vuoriโs products are manufactured in third-party facilities located outside the US. They claim to select manufacturing partners that align with their values, but there is limited information on the specific countries or regions involved. Vuori requires its suppliers to meet basic labor standards, but again a lack of detailing on how this is monitored demonstrates the potentially challenging ability to monitor ethical labor standards when offshoring facilities. This choice clearly impacts the transparency and ethical assurance of Vuoriโs supply chain.
Vuoriโs Sustainable Brand Rating: Is Vuori a Good Brand?
To understand the logistics and facts around Vuoriโs commitment to sustainability, let’s see how they scored with Eco-Stylist’s sustainable brand criteria.ย
Transparency 2/14
In terms of transparency, Vuori scored 2 based on their sub-contracting acknowledgment. To elaborate, the Vuori Code of Conduct requires subcontractors beyond their initial factories to comply with the Code of Conduct of no discrimination, forced or child labor, or human trafficking while also acknowledging environmental responsibility, hours worked, health and safety, and dormitory conditions for workers, therefore acknowledging to some extent the potential risks of subcontracting.ย
However, upon greater inspection, a lot of Vuoriโs acknowledgment of what needs to be done and standards that need to be met don’t tend to go beyond this acknowledgment and brief descriptions around the aforementioned Code of Conduct. In this case, a lack of transparency and evidence for this gives Vuroi a score of 0 for supply chain transparency on the basis that factories aren’t disclosed. While Vuori seems to address its supply chain on its website, little factual and traceable information is given other than snippets of words, not allowing us to delve into the actual conditions or location and therefore local laws regarding factory conditions.
Vuori doesnโt indicate any ongoing or future efforts to improve the traceability of their products, indicating that little internal responsibility is acknowledged within the companyโs sustainable consciousness.
Fair Labor 2/33
In terms of fair labor for Vuoris employees refer to the Fair Labor Association through their Code of Conduct which is publicly available for review. Again, while this is a positive thing that Vuroi pays some level of attention to labor standards, this is only in written form, with little evidence or detailed company commitment to back this up. It almost seems that there is a kind of halfhearted commitment to fair labor.
In terms of workers well being, Vuori scored 0 against Eco-Stylistโs criteria, with no indication of piloted schemes or future improvements of living wages, well-being programs, or community engagement that would improve employees’ work-life balance and living standards as an employee of Vuori.
Based on Eco-Stylist’s criteria there are minimal efforts to ensure basic human rights are respected other than the advisory application of the Code of Conduct. However, Vuori doesn’t elaborate on how they ensure that basic human rights are continuously, regularly measured, and maintained. There seem to be no sustainable and ethical labor practices in place such as worker helplines, union capacity building, regular assessment of first-tier facilities, knowledge of worker risks, or any action taken to address potential risks to workers. This lack of depth of exploration into workers’ labor rights from Vuori thus presents a scenario in which fair labor for workers and their well-being and positive life skills gained from work canโt be confirmed, creating doubt surrounding the ethically sound conditions for those working within Vuori.ย
Sustainably Made 17/49
Environmental sustainability is the area that Vuori performs most successfully in, specifically in their use of some raw materials that are environmentally sustainable where possible, with 55.5% of their materials being more environmentally sustainable and with hopes of furthering this, this progress alongside aspirational goals that is so crucial to encouraging and implementing sustainable change.
Vuoriโs packaging is also having a revamp, with their teams working on eliminating the majority of their plastic packaging and implementing a fewer materials approach and bags made from recycled materials that require them. We emphasize working on this as there is little evidence or timeline of these changes being implemented.
As previously explored Vuori is making strives to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, with the end goal of becoming carbon neutral and currently focusing on carbon offsetting. However, this can often run the risk of diverting tangible change away from priority. Vuoriโs ability to claim climate-neutral certification, while an environmentally positive thing, shouldnโt be taken at face value, on the basis that this certification comes from carbon offsetting from engaging in other environmentally beneficial projects as opposed to the company being internally making carbon-neutral adjustments. Furthermore, Vuori notes a 5-page โPath to Happinessโ document detailing their priorities, but with weak backing.
It seems that Vuori misses key and increasingly common ways of contributing to environmental sustainability, namely energy reduction pathways, acknowledgment and understanding of water usage, its environmental impact, and the relevant technologies and schemes necessary to improve water usage.
A major aspect often neglected in the fashion world is circularity, an area that Vuori also neglects. Its lack of attention paid to schemes like clothing takebacks for repair or second-hand resale has the potential to reduce the lifecycle of its garments and post-consumer waste generated from clothing. Aligning with Eco-Stylists brand rating Vuori doesnโt make conscious efforts to reduce their waste at any stage of their business.
Our Principles -10
Talking about our three principles when rating brands, Vuori scores 0 on our ‘Is the brand fast fashion’ rating, meaning that our assessment deems Vuori not to be fast fashion. It also meets our principle of ‘Do we trust the brand’. It is worth stating here that this can be an ambiguous principle as while Vuori isn’t outwardly greenwashing or being misleading about their business processes, putting full trust in a brand is limited when there isn’t total transparency around manufacturing, working conditions, pay and so on – a trait of which Vuroi lacks.
So, while Vuori technically meets our first two principles, their inspiration paints a different image, scoring -10 on ‘Does the brand inspire us’. When it comes to actionable steps made towards progressing sustainability within the brand, it’s clear a fair amount of progress is necessary to enhance Vuori’s social and environmental sustainability, and provide inspiration to consumers and brands alike.
Vuori Overall Sustainability Score: 11
Overall, with all factors considered Vuori fails the Eco-Stylist ethical and sustainable brand rating. While there are definitely worse brands out there in the world, Vuori doesn’t exactly paint a picture-perfect image of sustainability, with a major lack of transparency, it’s hard to place trust in Vuori’s practices. It would be great if Vuori were to publish a more transparent and detailed business model across their supply chain to clarify their sustainability efforts, as well as improve them, enabling us as consumers to make more sustainable, informed choices.
3 Ethical Alternatives to Vuoriย
You shouldnโt need to constantly change around your activewear collection, buying new pieces to replace worn, poor-quality ones, or to be part of a trend. That is why weโve provided a solid 3 staple brands to source your activewear from that make greater strives towards being sustainable than made evident by Vuori, providing you with durable, mix-and-match activewear staples that are wearable no matter the trend, but also provide you with a legitimately positive piece of mind regarding your sustainable consumption.
1. Patagonia
Patagonia, a pioneer in the sustainable fashion movement, produces high-quality performance clothing, accessories, and footwear for pretty much all outdoor activities you can name, all season round. With top ratings for transparency, fair labor, and sustainably made Patagonia quickly outruns Vuori in sustainability performance, with just one example being their commitment to reducing scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2030, as opposed to Vuroiโs 42% reduction aim.
Patagonia offers a Worn Wear Program where you can purchase second-hand garments at a cheaper cost, benefiting both your pocket and the environment by reducing clothes sent to landfills and extending their lifecycle, further extended through their takebacks and repairs services to repair any of your damaged or worn clothes so you can continue to get great use out of them.
2. prAna
prAna is an all-things outdoors and yoga clothing company, offering sustainable clothing produced in factories that are majority fair trade certified (working towards 100% by 2028) and in 100% plastic-free packaging. Their products range from swimwear to climbing kits and yoga to loungewear, as one of the first brands that partnered with Fair Trade USA for apparel.
All of prAnaโs factories are disclosed for your viewing, along with garment maker personal profiles and evidence of labor adherence to suitably inform you and enable you, the consumer, to make the best decision on your sustainable consumption.
3. Coalatree
Coalatree creating โeco-minded goodsโ is another outdoor apparel brand with significantly more commitment and evidence of commitment to environmental and social sustainability. Coalatree focuses on using recycled polyester and recycled plastic bottles for materials in the production of garments, contributing to a circular system of sustainable fashion and reducing waste levels and greenhouse gas emissions from the production, extraction, and manufacturing of new materials to make our clothes and, having said that all your clothes from Coalatree will feel as good as new!
Coalatree also prioritizes their workers, while they could provide more information on their factories, they are Bluesign and fair wear certified, alongside carrying out regular audits of factories to ensure the wellbeing of their workers. Your clothes from Coalatree also go that extra mile, with clothing tags printed on recycled paper and packaging for your items being made from post-consumer waste. You can feel confident that the clothes you are purchasing from Coalatree are making great strides towards sustainability.
Looking for More Sustainable Activewear Brands?
If these brands haven’t satisfied your taste for sustainable activewear, feel free to check out our sustainable shopping guides for 15 more brands!
And of course, for even more brands doing better for the planet, you can filter our Brand Guide by activewear.
Grace is graduating from the University of Sheffield this summer after studying Geography. She loves all things sustainability and fashion, spending her time making and up-cycling clothes. She also has a new found love for writing and a passion to help make positive change in the world.
