Product Authenticity

Using safer chemistry from the start means there’s less to clean up in our onsite wastewater facilities. This ensures our products are free of substances dangerous to humans and the environment.

In 2023, we certified over 9% of all our production to OEKO-TEX^® — a prestigious certification that tests the safety of our garments from thread to zipper. For more information, click here. Our efforts in 2023 were instrumental in achieving 100% certification in 2024, one year earlier than our original 2025 goal. This will be reflected in our 2024 Sustainability Report.

Our commitment to better processes and best practices for water and energy usage includes:

• Ensuring all our own manufacturing sites and those of our suppliers comply with our Restricted Substance List, managed through a third party, online system.
• 100% of our European production remains certified to the OEKO-TEX^® Standard 100 label. For more information, click here. Labels like this help provide consumers with a reliable way to shop for safer textiles.

Progress toward our 100% goal has fluctuated in line with total production volume changes. In the future, we plan to expand beyond activewear into more casual and underwear lines.

Knowing our suppliers and how they source materials is how we can ensure people are treated fairly. That’s why we have published Tier 1 supplier data on our website since 2012. We’re also committed to mapping all our products back to raw materials – whether that’s cotton, leather or rubber.

Focusing on transparency enables us to better analyze and address potential risks, such as forced labor, through better visibility of our suppliers’ supply chain. It also enables us to conduct risk assessments in real time — informed by guidelines from the Fair Labor Association, the International Labor Organization, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Our supply chain is complex and changes frequently with the introduction of new products, so we measure our progress on an annual basis.

To date, 18% of our Tier 1 suppliers are engaged and mapped to raw materials annually. We believe we are on track to reach our goal of transparency in our supply chain by 2025.

We’re committed to sourcing raw materials that lower our carbon footprint, reduce water consumption and waste, and meet our standards for social and environmental responsibility.

Cotton is one of our most important raw materials, and we’re working with our yarn and fabric suppliers to promote the use of more sustainable cotton from end to end. Today, 88% of our cotton comes from sustainable suppliers in the U.S. — and we aim to responsibly source the remaining 12% from global suppliers.

We also aim to procure yarn and fabric made with cotton from sustainable sources through partnerships with organizations like Cotton LEADS, Cotton USA and Better Cotton. These partnership will help us reach 100% sustainable cotton by 2025.

We created a multi-disciplinary team to manage a transition plan to replace virgin fibers with recycled. Our priority is polyester, driven by volume. In 2021, we rolled out recycled polyester in one of our core products: t-shirts. Earlier in 2022, we launched a recycled polyester fleece for our activewear brands.

We are transitioning our U.S. e-commerce bags to 100% recycled materials (90% post-consumer recycled and 10% post-industrial recycled.) Our U.S. retail bags are now made with 60% recycled plastic, and we’re working with suppliers to innovate new ways to increase that number without compromising visual clarity. We also began sourcing FSC paper packaging for Vanity Fair and Fruit of the Loom products in 2021.

As breathable as it is biodegradable, modal has a soft, silky texture and absorbent qualities that make it a natural choice for apparel worn close to the skin. That’s why we selected it for Vanity Fair’s sleepwear line, Beyond Comfort® pajamas — made with LENZING^™ ECOVERO^™, one of the world’s leading producers of quality modal.

We have released additional underwear lines produced from these natural fibers. In 2023, we launched our Fruitful Threads^™ Men’s Underwear Collection, combining 96% LENZING^™ ECOVERO^™ Viscose fibers with Fruit of the Loom’s clothing expertise to create stylish and responsibly made underwear.