What is For Love and Lemons?
For Love and Lemons is a ready-to-wear brand that specializes in everything uber-feminine. What started as a lingerie brand has expanded to offer nearly everything: apparel, lingerie, swimwear and workout wear.
The brand was founded by Laura Hall and Gillian Rose Kern, 2 childhood best friends who had the same principles in mind when launching their fashion brand – “female camaraderie and love and compassion for all”.
Today, the brand is well-known in the world of fashion. It’s built a legacy of dreamy, tempting apparel that’s price point appeals to everyone, celebrities and otherwise.
Along with its trademark style, For Love and Lemons prides itself on its ethical practices. But, exactly how rosy is the production behind their statement pieces? Let’s find out!
How is For Love and Lemons Ethical?
For Love and Lemons has a Transparency page intended to highlight their inclusive and charitable practices. One of their aims is to include BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ identifying people in all areas of their business. In fact, they detail the percentages of each identifying party in their company.
They also make “Social Impact Donations” to organizations like NAACP Legal Defense, Black Lives Matter and ACLU. In 2021, they implemented Round Up for Charity – an initiative that allows customers to round up their purchases to an even number with all extra change donated to a charitable cause.
Round Up for Charity isn’t without its flaws – customers don’t have a choice in which charity they’re rounding up for and it’s often hard to make a fast decision to support an organization you know nothing about at checkout. However, it’s a good sign For Love and Lemons is taking steps to support non-profits.
But, what do they do with ethics in mind on the production level?
Inside Their Factories
The brand offers another page ”inside our factories” that explains For Love and Lemons’s
use of 2 factories: their own ”dedicated” factory in Suzhou, China and another in Guangzhou. Their dedicated factory is approved by the Business Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI) based on their code of conduct. Meaning an audit is performed to ensure factories abide by the standards as outlined by the BSCI.
BSCI’s code of conduct is linked on For Love and Lemons’ site. Some areas include no child labor, occupational health and safety, ”decent” working hours and ethical business behavior.
Their outlined principles are good reminders of how a lawful workplace should operate. However, the code of conduct doesn’t include much in ways of actually enforcing their code. There is no mention of timing of audits. It instead acknowledges that “gaps, shortcomings, failures and unpredictable occurrences will always remain a possibility”. This phrasing doesn’t inspire confidence.
A code of conduct should explicitly outline how their principles will be upheld instead of acknowledging they probably won’t be off top. While it is logistically impossible to constantly watch factories for ethical compliance, there should be reasonable surveillance outlined in the code. It’s not enough to say rules will be followed. There needs to be action that proves those rules are being followed, and fact checkers who hold these factories accountable.
Choice words in the code of conduct like ensuring factories provide ”decent working conditions” and “decent working hours” also allow for ambiguity. “Decent” implies not horrible which to me, leaves space for very bad.
To prove the ethical standing of For Love and Lemons’ factories and others who comply with BSCI standards, there needs to be no room for interpretation. Simply strict standards as enforced by dedicated officers. I don’t see proof of either in this code of conduct.
I’d like to see something easily provable on For Love and Lemons’ site. For example, paying workers a flat rate rather than per number of items produced. Or the most recent factory audits. Neither are easily accessible.
Their sustainability page is similarly vague. While it alludes to moving away from certain damaging materials and practices, there aren’t any reports conducted by third-party agencies to back up their claims.
Final Word
For Love and Lemons is known for their high-end, feminine apparel at more accessible prices than other luxury brands. However, their claims of high ethics don’t match with their practices. At least not from what’s available on their website.
A brand is only ethical if it is also transparent. And there’s a lack of transparency with For Love and Lemons. They don’t have third-party backed proof of their factory’s standards, they don’t have testimonials from their employees. They don’t even have photos from within their production facilities!
The brand disappoints in terms of ethical practices for their garment workers. Which in turn disappoints us as (past) admirers.
References
- For Love & Lemons – About Us
- For Love & Lemons – Transparency
- For Love & Lemons – Inside Our Factories
- BSCI Code of Conduct
