13 Brands Like Ivory Ella for Eco-Friendly Fashion With a Cause
A give-back promise is the easiest thing in fashion to say and the hardest to check. Ivory Ella at least puts a number where you can read it: the brand's mission page pledges "10% of all profits" to Save The Elephants and other charitable organisations, and counts $2.0 million given so far. Once a graphic-tee label has shown you that much, a banner reading "we give back" stops being enough anywhere else. So for these 13 brands like Ivory Ella we went looking for the same thing on each one's own site: what it commits, who receives it, and who does the counting.
Quick comparison: the closest matches on cause and price are Tentree, United By Blue and Cotopaxi, all of which publish a per-purchase pledge. Pact and Everlane are the cheap-basics picks and neither donates a cent, so what you're buying is the material and the factory story. TOMS and Toad&Co give through a foundation and a jobs programme rather than a percentage. Reformation is the dressed-up option, and Allbirds the footwear one.
| Brand | What it commits, on its own site | Who reports it | Price we verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tentree | 10 trees planted per item | Tentree, tracked in its own veritree system | $45 tee, $88 hoodie |
| Pact | No donation pledge. GOTS organic cotton, Fair Trade factories | GOTS holds the fibre certification, the factories hold the Fair Trade seal | $24 tee |
| Girlfriend Collective | No donation pledge. Leggings from 25 recycled bottles | Girlfriend Collective | $108 legging |
| United By Blue | One pound of trash removed per product sold | United By Blue, cleanups run with Plastic Bank and Sungai Watch | $228 jacket |
| Patagonia | Nothing we could read. The site refuses our checks | Unverified here | Premium |
| Cotopaxi | 1% of annual revenue to the Cotopaxi Foundation | Cotopaxi, giving to a Utah 501c3 it set up | $55 tee, $155 rain jacket |
| Allbirds | No donation pledge. Wool, tree fibre and sugarcane materials | Allbirds | $105 sneaker |
| TOMS | $200M+ in grants and shoe donations since 2006 | TOMS, in an annual impact report, as a certified B Corp | $50 to $65 slip-on |
| prAna | No donation pledge. Fair Trade Certified apparel since 2011 | Fair Trade Certified, on the products | $48 tee |
| Everlane | No donation pledge. Cost breakdown per product | Everlane | $34 tee |
| Kotn | Jobs, infrastructure and schooling in its cotton communities | Kotn, as a certified B Corp | Mid-range |
| Reformation | No donation pledge. Carbon and water figures per product | Reformation, methodology reviewed yearly by an outside consultant | Premium |
| Toad&Co | Paid work and training for people with disabilities | Toad&Co with the nonprofit Search360 | $48 to $55 tee |
Tentree
Tentree sells the cosiest wardrobe on this list and attaches the loudest pledge to it: "EVERY ITEM PLANTS 10 TREES", printed across its own tree-planting FAQ. Worth knowing who counts those trees. The number comes from Tentree's own veritree system, which hands you a code with your order so you can look up where your ten went, and the page shows B Corp, Climate Label and Science Based Targets badges without claiming an outside audit of the planting total.
The clothes hold up on their own. The Juniper T-Shirt runs $45 and the matching Juniper Hoodie $88, both in a heavyweight cotton-and-recycled-poly blend, with the Bamone Sweatpant at $78. If your Ivory Ella drawer is hoodies and joggers, this is the same drawer with a different cause stapled to it. We go deeper into its rivals in 19 brands like Tentree.
Best for: Hoodies and joggers with a per-item pledge you can trace to a code
Pact
Pact makes the cheapest organic cotton basics here and, unlike Ivory Ella, promises no slice of profit to anyone. What it does promise is on the label. Pact's own fibre page states that "Pact's products are Certified Organic by the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS)", which is a claim about the cotton itself.
The Fair Trade seal is a separate matter, and the wording repays attention: Pact's factories page says Fair Trade "works closely on the ground with Pact's factories". The certification sits with the factory, not with Pact. That's a real thing for the people sewing your tee and a smaller thing than a company-wide badge.
An Organic Softspun Essential Crewneck Tee costs $24 and the Luxe version $28, which is the cheapest way onto this list. See how it compares in 18 brands like Pact Organic.
Best for: Stocking up on organic cotton tees under $30
Girlfriend Collective
Girlfriend Collective puts its money into the fabric instead of a foundation. The Compressive High-Rise Legging is $108 and its product page says outright that it's made from 25 recycled water bottles, with the pocket version at $118.
The size range is the part worth switching for. That legging comes in XXS through 6XL, and each size in three inseams at 23.75, 28 and 31 inches, which is a wider grid than most activewear brands attempt. Ivory Ella keeps you in graphic layers. This is what you wear underneath them at the gym.
There's no donation pledge and the brand doesn't pretend otherwise, so judge it on the bottles and the fit. Our full rundown lives in 13 brands like Girlfriend Collective.
Best for: Recycled-bottle leggings in XXS to 6XL and three inseams
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United By Blue
United By Blue runs the most concrete pledge here. Its sustainability page reads "for every product sold, United By Blue removes one pound of trash from our world's oceans and waterways", with a counter at 5,635,105 pounds and named partners for the international work, Plastic Bank and Sungai Watch. The counter is the company's own.
Buy carefully, though. When we read the catalogue it held 814 products and 5,266 variants with 342 available, and the clothing has thinned to about 15 styles with any size left, most of them at half price. Bags, socks and drinkware are what the site leads with now.
The Bison Ultralight Liner Jacket at $228 was in stock and added to a cart cleanly, and the (R)evolution 25L Transit Pack lists at $118. Go for the pack rather than the flannel.
Best for: A bag or a pair of socks that funds a pound of cleanup
Patagonia
Patagonia is the brand every list like this reaches for, and it's the one entry we can tell you least about today. Every request our checker made to patagonia.com came back as a 404 from an Akamai edge server, on the homepage, on product pages and on robots.txt alike. The site renders in an ordinary browser. It won't answer a script.
That matters here because the rule for this article is that a giving claim goes in only if the brand's own site says it. Patagonia's wouldn't load for us, so we're quoting no percentage, no ownership arrangement and no price, rather than repeating figures from memory.
What we can say is that the outdoor gear sits well above Ivory Ella on price and is built to be repaired rather than replaced. Read the pledge on the site itself before you buy on the strength of it.
Best for: Outdoor kit you'll keep for a decade, once you've read its claims yourself
Cotopaxi
Cotopaxi publishes the cleanest version of a giving pledge on this page. Its impact page states that "1% of our annual revenue goes to the Cotopaxi Foundation", names that foundation as "a Utah-based private 501c3 nonprofit organization", and identifies the trading entity as Global Uprising, PBC.
Revenue is the number to notice. A percentage of revenue comes off the top and doesn't shrink in a bad year, which a percentage of profit does. Ivory Ella's 10% is of profit, and both are real commitments that behave differently.
The clothes are bright and built for a trail. A Pulso Tech T-Shirt is $55, the Sombra Sun Hoodie $75 and the Cielo Rain Jacket $155, and the Del Día packs come from remnant fabric so no two match. More options in 16 brands like Cotopaxi.
Best for: Colourful trail gear funded by a fixed slice of revenue
Allbirds
Allbirds is the footwear entry, and it gives nothing away. Its sustainability page is about materials, specifically replacing petroleum-based synthetics with merino wool, tree fibre and sugarcane, and we found no per-product carbon figure on the product pages we opened.
That makes it a swap on inputs, not on charity. The Men's Cruiser runs $105 and the Women's Wool Runner NZ Mid Waterproof $160, and the wool ones are the reason people rebuy: they wash in a machine and they don't need socks in summer.
Pair them with your Ivory Ella tees and you've covered the bit of the outfit that touches the pavement. If shoes are the gap in your wardrobe, start with 12 shoe brands like Allbirds.
Best for: Machine-washable wool sneakers, bought for the material rather than a cause
TOMS
TOMS invented buy-one-give-one and has quietly retired it. Its impact page now describes One for One in the past tense and gives cumulative totals instead: "$200M+ given in the form of grants and shoe donations since 2006" and "100M+ pairs of shoes given". The named recipients are Save the Children, Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services and GirlForward.
Those totals come from TOMS itself, published each year in an impact report, and the company carries a Certified B Corporation mark that a third party awards. So the shape of the promise has moved from a rule per pair to a running tally.
The shoes stayed the same. An Alpargata Classic is $50 and the Mary Jane and ballet-flat versions run $55 to $65. See the alternatives in 13 shoe brands like TOMS.
Best for: Cheap slip-ons from a B Corp with a published giving total
prAna
prAna has been doing this since 1992, which its own sustainability timeline lays out year by year: first product in 1993, first organic cotton in 2004, "we bring the first Fair Trade Certified apparel to the market" in 2011, supply-chain list published in 2019. Carlsbad, California, and now part of Columbia.
There's no donation pledge, and that timeline is the substitute. A Fair Trade seal on a garment means a premium reaches the workers who made it, which is a different mechanism from writing a cheque to a charity.
The clothes suit a yoga mat and a trailhead equally. An Everyday Long Sleeve Tee is $48, the Pure Ascent Short Sleeve $48, and the Cozy Up Long Sleeve Crew $64. Heavier than an Ivory Ella tee and cut to move in.
Best for: Yoga and hiking layers with Fair Trade seals on the products themselves
Everlane
Everlane trades on information rather than giving. Its about page calls the approach Radical Transparency and promises to "share those stories with you—down to the true cost of every product we make", which is a cost breakdown per item, not a donation.
Take that for what it covers. A published cost sheet tells you what the materials and labour came to on the product in front of you. It doesn't answer where the factory is on wages or how the fibre was grown, and we look at the wider picture in is Everlane fast fashion.
The clothes are the plainest here on purpose. The Box-Cut Tee in Essential Cotton is $34 and the Luxe Rib Long-Sleeve Crew $48, both cut for people who want their shirt to say nothing at all.
Best for: Plain, well-cut basics with the cost breakdown printed alongside
Kotn
Kotn puts its giving inside the supply chain rather than beside it. The about page says that with each order the brand invests "in the creation of jobs, infrastructure, systems, and education" in the Egyptian cotton communities it buys from, and that it's "a certified B Corporation voted Best for the World".
The founding story is on the same page and it's unusually specific: three friends, Ben, Mackenzie and Rami, and a six-month stay by Rami in a Nile Delta farming community before any shirt existed. That's where the cotton still comes from.
We're not quoting a price. The store answered one of our requests in US dollars and the next in Canadian, so any figure we printed would be a coin flip. It sits mid-range, in the same neighbourhood as prAna. Compare it in 18 brands like Kotn.
Best for: Egyptian cotton basics bought direct from the farming region
Reformation
Reformation is where you go when a hoodie won't do. It donates nothing, and instead attaches a carbon and water figure to every product through a tool called RefScale, which the brand describes as tracking "the carbon and water footprint of our stuff" against the average garment bought in the United States.
Read the verification line carefully, because it's better than most and narrower than it sounds. Reformation says it works "with a third party consultant annually to review and verify our methodology". An outsider checks how the sums are done. The numbers themselves are still the brand's.
Prices sit at the premium end and the site was running a sitewide sale when we looked, so we're not quoting a list figure that a banner had already crossed out. Start with 16 brands like Reformation.
Best for: Dresses for an occasion, with a per-product footprint figure attached
Toad&Co
Toad&Co gives in the least fashionable currency in the business, which is payroll. Its doing good page describes Planet Access as "our social venture and partnership with Search360, a nonprofit providing high-quality services and support for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities", and says the warehouse behind it "employed up to 70 individuals with disabilities annually" in paid, train-to-work roles.
The programme has moved on from that warehouse and the current shape is on the same page: retail stores in Chicago staffed through the partnership, a Visibility Arts studio whose sales go to the artists, disability-awareness training sold to other retailers, and an adventure travel programme.
The clothes are soft, roomy and made for a weekend. A Marley Tee is $55, the Whisper Tee $48, the Marley Long Sleeve $62 and a Re-Form Flannel Shirt $90.
Best for: Relaxed weekend layers from a brand that gives through jobs
How to Read a Give-Back Claim Before You Buy
Three questions sort this list fast. Is the pledge a share of profit or of revenue, because revenue survives a bad year and profit doesn't. Who receives the money, a named charity like Save The Elephants or a foundation the brand set up itself. And who publishes the total, the company or somebody outside it.
Run those against your own shortlist and the answers land differently. Cotopaxi and Ivory Ella both give a percentage, of different things. Toad&Co gives jobs. Pact and Everlane give nothing and say so, which is its own kind of straight answer. Pick the mechanism you'd defend to a friend, then buy the tee.
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Written by
Spencer Lanoue
