Branded on providing “responsible luxury fashion,” formerly online-only department store Toward opened its first brick-and-mortar location on Melrose Avenue this past May.
After being strictly online for the company’s first year of operation, the Toward store is now open for Angelenos to shop their favorite sustainable, high-fashion brands in person.
The idea for Toward came from Ana Kannan, the store’s founder and CEO, during the peak months of the pandemic. After noticing an increased focus on the environment and sustainability during the COVID-19 outbreak, Kannan found that the fashion industry was difficult to navigate. Unsure of how to deduce whether or not brands were truly sustainable, Kannan decided to tackle the issue herself.
“I thought there has to be some sort of middleman that can absorb and take in this sensitive information, but also verify that these brands are truly responsible and then put together a curation of responsible brands that people will want to shop from,” Kannan said.
Kannan has thoughtfully designed the Toward store to exude high class and luxury while still ensuring the store’s practices maintain ethical values. Using only second-hand furniture, recycled mannequins and packaging made with at least 60% recycled materials, Kannan manages to remain responsible without sacrificing style. Set up in a showroom style, with dangling gold clothing racks, sophisticated yet minimalistic decor and a wall of dried flowers, Toward is a welcoming environment with great pieces.
Representing brands like Agolde, Citizens of Humanity, House of Sunny, Yuzefi and more, Toward ensures all of their brands uphold their responsibility framework. This consists of a questionnaire with over 100 questions about brands’ practices covering topics like workers rights, supply chain transparency, carbon emissions, materials and even biodiversity and forestry. Toward will only take on brands that are able to score high enough on the questionnaire and provide proper documentation to back up their sustainability claims.
It’s important to note that sustainability in the fashion industry is multifaceted, making it a work in progress. This very concept inspired Toward’s name.
“Our company name is Toward because it's moving forward—future forward, sustainability forward and making progress,” Kannan said. “We are always in pursuit of progress over perfection. With our responsibility framework, we cover so many different aspects but not every brand can be perfect, but we should always look toward their progress.”
Toward’s concept goes against the ill-plagued nature of fast fashion. Made clear by its name, fast fashion is all about speed. It’s about how quickly brands can produce clothing with little regard to the quality of what they’re making. Additionally, brands using the fast fashion method often prioritize the latest trends, meaning their clothes have a short shelf life both in terms of how long they will last and how long they will remain in style.
In the last two decades, fashion trends have been going in and out of style more quickly than ever before. There’s a hyperfixation on new styles, which is causing way more fashion production and, consequently, a lot more waste. The average American gets rid of 80 pounds of clothing every year and 65% of that ends up in landfills. On average, people are only wearing garments seven times before tossing them out to keep up with the ever changing trends of the modern fashion industry.
In response to this excess waste, ethical fashion brands try to create pieces that transcend trendiness and can be a part of your wardrobe for the long run. While a large part of creating a sustainable wardrobe is investing in classic neutral pieces that never go out of style, Toward wants to also provide its customers with exciting and fresh pieces that will still have a long shelf life.
“We have this really strong contemporary collection that appeals to the millennial shopper, as well as Gen Z shoppers who are coming into wealth as well,” Kannan said. “[For] anyone who comes here, it's not just going to be the same old boring plain linen pants or a plain cotton t-shirt. We have interesting prints, patterns and silhouettes that'll appeal to a wide range of shoppers.”
Aside from insurmountable waste, the fashion industry is notorious for its poor treatment of workers—workers who are often being forced into child labor. Unimaginable hours, no ventilation, exposure to toxic chemicals and verbal and physical abuse are common for fashion factory workers. This is why Toward vets its brands on their treatment of workers to ensure they are not supporting unsafe working conditions.
Additionally, the fashion industry is responsible for 10% of global carbon dioxide output, which is more than international flights and shipping combined. In response to this, Toward works to offset all the emissions for shipments going out from their online store as well as returns. Essentially this means that there's no new carbon being emitted into the atmosphere that's not recaptured through their offset processes.
“I believe that our responsibility framework is the most holistic and, at the same time, the most granular in the industry,” Kannan said. “I think that’s really what makes us unique.”
See also: A Look at New L.A.-Based Clothing Line Grover Rad
Photography by: Courtesy Toward
