Since the late ’80s, Carhartt has been an iconic brand worn by DJs, designers, forklift drivers and fashion influencers. A staple of the wardrobes of rappers such as Tupac and ASAP Rocky, it has been invited to collaborate with Italian luxury fashion house Marni, Japanese brand Sacai and students at Detroit’s College for Creative Studies. How does Carhartt go from elite to mainstream so effortlessly and still have that certain understated cool factor that everyone wants to partake in?
“Honestly, I think that’s because we don’t try at all,” Gretchen Valade, Carhartt’s sustainability director, told FashionUnited on her recent trip to New York. “We are really very focused on the workers. And even if we’re trending back in, say, New York or Brooklyn, that’s really cool, but we’re wondering, what do plumbers and woodworkers need? We recognize and appreciate that, but at the end of the day we make functional clothing for workers and that is our way of thinking. We have retail stores and are available on Amazon, but also through the Tractor Supply Company.”
It’s this cross-generational, trend-breaking quality of Carhartt that makes the square patch logo with the orange “C” so distinctive. For fall, the workwear giant is keeping its Work In Progress collection fresh, combining items from its own archives with the bohemian artistry of the Bloomsbury Group. Beneath the double knee pants, Michigan chore coat and dungarees with details like triple-stitched cargo pockets, hammer loops and worker pen tunnels, there are dandy nods in paisley patterns and blanket linings.
Valade, a descendant of founder Hamilton Carhartt, recalls that one of her first projects as sustainability director early in the pandemic was the launch of Carhartt Reworked. The resale program offers the take-back of used Carhartt items, which are cleaned, repaired, and put back on the market. The program’s Instagram page said: “When you make clothes the right way, using the highest quality materials and paying attention to every detail, you make clothes that stay in circulation and don’t end up in landfills. “
The 134-year-old company remains true to its roots
Hamilton Carhartt of Michigan began making coveralls for local US railroad workers in 1889, but the brand was soon adopted by ranchers, farmers and construction workers who shopped at farm cooperatives and hardware stores. In the 1980s, hip-hop artists wore Carhartt’s canvas clothing in muted khaki and mustard yellow in their music videos, associating the brand with iconic baggy streetwear style. During the war, the company produced coveralls for soldiers, jungle suits for marines, and work clothes for women entering the labor market on the home front. Today, Carhartt is still a privately held, family-owned company headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan. The company has four US factories in Kentucky and Tennessee and employs, according to the New York Times some of the last unionized garment workers in America, as well as operations in Mexico and China to follow Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production (WRAP) certification. The brand uses local suppliers for cotton, buttons and drawstrings.
Despite data showing that the fashion industry continues to fall short of its target to reduce emissions and that greenwashing is dominating the headlines, Valade remains undeterred and continues to work on her plans to create a sustainability-minded team.
“It can be incredibly difficult to actually embed sustainability into a brand and a company,” she says. “But I was kind of born into it.” When she talks about sustainability, it’s as if it’s something that exists and breathes, even raising the question of where sustainability “lives” in a company. If it lives in the fibers, responsibility can be passed on to the development team, but if it lives in transparency, it’s in the hands of the communications team, Valade said. At Carhartt, the Sustainability Director sees her job as ensuring that sustainability is lived everywhere. “In order to have the greatest impact, we are strategizing what sustainability means to Carhartt because it can mean so many different things to different people. Then we have a steering committee that includes leaders from across the company to help us achieve our goals.”
She points out that some brands may not have had their own sustainability directors in the past, but instead had strategy directors who included sustainability as part of their remit. “But now there are so many laws and regulations out there that not being focused on them can lead to even more disruption within an organization because you don’t have the foresight to understand what’s coming,” Valade warns.
The rise to sustainability director of the family business is not only the result of luck, but also of hard work. While still in high school and during summer break in college, Valade went through various departments. “I was privileged to have this opportunity,” she says of her work on the product and design teams before going freelance for global supply chain company Li & Fung in Hong Kong and New Delhi. “At some point,” she says, “my thinking shifted from product to values and I started wondering who Carhartt is outside of the clothes we make.” She became a member of the Detroit Industrial Sewing and Innovation Center and the Board of Trustees of the Nature Conservancy in Michigan. One of their first projects was to create a space that represents Carhartt but does not manufacture any products. She built the Carhartt workshop, which includes a tool lending library where people can borrow what they need to repair their homes and gardens. “That’s how I maneuvered myself to where I am now, with a focus on environmental sustainability, closely linked to social sustainability and supply chain.”
Unfortunately, for many young fashion professionals looking for opportunities to make a difference in established companies, it can be difficult to gain a hearing from those in charge. Valade believes that even without being part of a sustainability team, there are opportunities to make a contribution as every company is at a different point in its journey. “When I started, I met with about 30 people from across the company to see where we were and where we were starting from,” she recalls. “I found that people were doing something to reduce our impact, but they didn’t call it sustainability. So it’s about keeping an open mind, having conversations, understanding how it all connects, and finding common ground to make a bigger impact.”
Bringing sustainability knowledge to the design spaces, materials sourcing and communications teams is important, Valade says, but also the ability to simplify the topic for colleagues or the older generation who didn’t grow up with it can be enough to to do something. Smaller brands are paving the way because they can adapt and act quickly to improve their systems, while larger companies can be more difficult to make a difference. “But no one can do it alone. Honestly, the most refreshing thing for me is that brands work together,” explains Valade. “The industry needs a change. It can’t just be one brand with a mission, like Patagonia, which I really appreciate for what they do, but they alone won’t be able to save the world. Everyone really has to pull together and work together.” And teams that work together have been at the heart of Carhartt’s business since 1889.
This article originally appeared on FashionUnited.uk. Translated and edited by Simone Preuss.