Sustainable fashion rarely fits a neat right/wrong frame – if I’m entirely honest with you, I think I avoided admitting the grey area is where I have been for many years – the irony is this is where all the ‘change’ is happening. I’ve spent years working in this space, as a stylist, as someone who speaks publicly about ethics, and as a woman building a wardrobe and a business – and what I keep coming back to is this: most of the work happens in the grey.
In this piece I want to talk about that honestly — how perfectionism can creep in, where the pressure to “get it right” comes from, and where I’ve landed on discernment instead of a sustainable luxury scorecard for myself and my clients.
Earlier in my career I was introduced almost everywhere as the sustainable stylist. Journalists called when they needed ethical commentary; brands approached me about sustainability. It was my entire world. My work sat at the intersection of fashion, ethics and visibility, and over time that became how people saw me. But… alongside that came an expectation — not only from others, but from myself. I felt I should be able to represent sustainability in its best possible form: in what I said, how I lived, what I wore, which brands I supported, how I ran my business, what business tools I used – every single facet on my life and business I held under tight scrutiny.
For a while that felt aligned; it made sense to hold a high standard. But over time the standard shifted into something less useful – it started to feel like ticking boxes… and making do. And that’s where the tension started.
The pressure to get sustainability “right”
Over the past few years I noticed a pattern in my own business. I had opportunities to grow — new projects, collaborations, ways to work more efficiently. Many of them involved newer technologies, including AI, to build systems and keep pace with how fast everything is shifting.
I hesitated — not because I didn’t understand the tools (my background in communications and change management meant I was already familiar with digital transformation), but because of a quiet question underneath: is this aligned enough? I slowed things down, worked manually where others were automating, waited for “better” options. I told myself I was protecting standards. In reality I was creating friction: stalled projects, lost momentum, time passing.
When I stepped back and looked at the wider landscape, the contradiction was obvious. Many of the organisations doing serious work in sustainability — research institutions, climate tech, the kind of organisations I respect — are using AI to move faster and solve complex problems at scale. Avoiding those tools wasn’t protecting my values; it was limiting how effectively I could operate in the world as it actually exists.
Why sustainable fashion isn’t black and white
This tension isn’t only about business. It sits at the centre of how we talk about sustainable fashion. The conversation often frames sustainability as something you can do correctly, and if you don’t do everything right you worry you’ll be grouped with the others that are greenwashing. But in many cases what this looks like from a personal style perspective is gaslighting yourself to believe what you’re doing still feels aligned – when it clearly isn’t.
Most wardrobes are a mix: pieces bought years ago before sustainability was a mainstream conversation; things you wear on repeat regardless of origin; preloved finds; investment pieces; clothes you’ve altered, repaired or repurposed. The reality is layered. Once you see that clearly, the idea of sustainability as binary — good or bad, in or out — starts to fall apart.
The contradictions we all live with
These contradictions show up everywhere, not just in fashion. There are vegans who wear vintage leather or fur because the material already exists; others choose not to. There are vegetarians who occasionally eat fish but don’t identify as pescatarian. There are people who care deeply about the environment and waste but still buy plastic-packaged products because there isn’t a workable alternative where they live.
For a long time I tried to strip as many contradictions as I could from my own life. If something didn’t fully align, I avoided it — which on paper looks disciplined but in practice can become restrictive. I felt it with skincare: I ruled out products that didn’t meet certain packaging or ingredient standards, and over time my skin became more reactive and harder to manage. That affected how comfortable I felt being seen — and when your work is visible, that matters.
It was a clear lesson that strict adherence without context can work against you. Sustainability isn’t separate from everyday life. It sits inside it.
Perfectionism and “sustainable” as a scorecard
There’s a psychological pattern behind this. Research into perfectionism — including work by Dr Thomas Curran at the London School of Economics — shows a rise in perfectionist tendencies, especially among people whose work is visible or evaluated. The outcome often isn’t better performance; it’s hesitation. When the bar feels impossibly high, people delay or avoid action altogether — behaviour that gets called an all-or-nothing mindset: if it can’t be done properly, it isn’t done at all.
You can see that in sustainability. People want to make better choices, but the criteria feel complex, sometimes contradictory, and hard to sustain day after day — so decisions get postponed or slip back to convenience. The intention is there; the follow-through is harder. This is why we need to get comfortable living in the messy middle – and that isn’t black or white.
Living and working inside imperfect systems
At some point you have to acknowledge that none of us operate outside the systems we critique. Parts of my website used AI-assisted code; it sits on infrastructure from global tech companies; the tools I use to run my business — payments, email, communication — are all part of that ecosystem. If I removed myself entirely from those systems, I wouldn’t have a business. That doesn’t fit neatly with sustainability ideals, but it is the reality.
For a long time I tried to minimise or delay that reality. What I’ve learned is that the choice isn’t between perfect alignment and total contradiction — it’s about how consciously you participate. There’s a difference between compromise and carelessness. Most people aren’t indifferent; they’re juggling time, access, money and what they know, and making the best call they can. That’s where sustainability actually lives for most of us.
From perfection to discernment
The biggest shift for me has been moving away from a fixed external standard and towards a more considered way of deciding — closer to how I think about wardrobe with clients.
Early in my work I leaned on visible markers: sustainable brands, certifications, materials. Those still matter, but they’re not the whole story. Whether I buy new or preloved, I look first at fabric quality, construction, how something sits on the body, and whether it fits how I want to express myself now. There are sustainable brands doing excellent work I don’t wear because the design doesn’t fit my style — and that’s not a rejection of sustainability; it’s an acknowledgement that ethics alone doesn’t build a wardrobe that works for you.
Discernment means holding several things at once: ethics, fit, longevity, relevance, how you want to feel when you walk into a room. That’s the same lens I use in my IMPACT-led styling work with private clients — alignment between who you are, how you live, and how you show up, rather than a checklist in isolation. If you want to go deeper on what we’re really paying for when we talk about craft, labour and longevity, I unpack that in Sustainable Luxury: Redefining What We Expect.
Navigating the grey
Most of this work happens in the grey — not in the rare moments when the answer is obvious, but when several things are true at once: your values are clear, but applying them isn’t straightforward; you’re operating inside imperfect systems but still trying to move in a better direction.
For years I resisted that space because it felt uncomfortable. I thought clarity meant ironing out every contradiction. It doesn’t.
The grey isn’t a failure of the system; it’s where real decisions get made — where trade-offs become visible and you learn the difference between what’s ideal and what’s possible. Staying in that space isn’t about lowering your standards or ignoring what you know; it’s about staying engaged, seeing where you can improve, where you’re already doing better, and where compromise is unavoidable — without using that as an excuse to switch off completely.
That shift has changed how I work with women: less focus on getting everything “right,” more on helping people make choices that fit who they are and the life they’re actually living — because that’s where most of us are, not at the extremes but somewhere in between, figuring it out as we go.
Where sustainable luxury meets identity
For me, sustainable luxury isn’t about removing every contradiction. It’s about having the awareness — and where possible, the means — to make better decisions over time: quality over volume, pieces that last, a wardrobe that reflects you rather than a rulebook you can’t sustain. It needs responsibility, but it also needs realism.
Without that, sustainability stays something people believe in in theory but struggle to live in practice — and then it loses impact.
Identity sits in the same grey. How you dress is never only an ethics score; it’s how you signal presence, the chapter you’re in, and self-respect. When discernment replaces perfectionism, your clothes can align with both your values and the woman you’re becoming — coherence you can actually live in, not performance for its own sake. I’m describing the same shift I write about in identity-driven personal style as the new luxury: outward expression that matches inner truth.
If you’re rethinking your wardrobe with that kind of coherence in mind the New Chapter Styling Experience might be a good option for you. If you want your wardrobe to match the woman you’re becoming and where you’re going – this is an investment that will reveal meaningful transformation.
If you’d like to explore any of this one to one, request a private consultation.
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