Looking for the how-to - YouLookFab Forum

In my recent post on going shopping, conversation turned to the sustainability of various corporations’ productions. LisaP rocked my world with this comment on RN and CA numbers.

These numbers , as you may know , identify the actual manufacturer of a garment . In many garments - in fact a huge majority of them - the label is a just a “ fake” name concocted by the manufacturer and has no real identity in itself . The numbers will help you dig deeper into the manufacturing practices of the factories

Now I’m trying to use those numbers to figure out if I want to get these jeans from the Gap. I’ve tried them on & like them, but am hitting roadblocks about how they are made. The Gap’s website has big bold goals for reducing water usage and waste by this year, but I don’t know if they’re actually making progress or if this particular garment is part of the “better” initiative.

The numbers are RN 54023 and CA 17897. If you can help me out (can’t make one forum member do all the work but LisaP, if you want to chime in again with instructions, please do! And anyone else with the knowledge, please do) please explain to me how to get from these numbers to information on production of the pants. Just googling them brings up a bunch of different Gap & ON jeans, many of them at resellers. There must be magic search terms or other steps to go through to figure it out. I’d appreciate any knowledge y’all drop on me. If you know another route to that same info, that’d be good too.

Here’s what I got googling the how to: https://www.rapidtags.com/rn-n.....ng-labels/

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4 years ago

Carla

Veteran

See #13 https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advic.....ion-number

Both links in this section will provide more information than you probably want to read. There isn’t a quick/easy answer to your specific question

Stagiaire Fash

Runcarla, that’s an awesome start—many thanks! I’ve just started looking through it and already see one very big issue—it looks like these might just get me to country of origin and extremely general descriptions of processes. Once I get there, I still won’t know how to find out how that particular process is done at that facility. And that, of course, is the point of the exercise—to support those actors that are working ethically & sustainably, while avoiding those that are not, and not painting entire swaths of the globe with the same brush.

Any ideas on how to proceed from there, anyone?

Anonymous

I haven’t had to search these in years , and I’m sorry to be occupied with other things at this time and don’t currently have the time/ mental energy to delve into this further. Hope you get the details you are looking for .

LisaP, no worries—of course you have a life. Thanks for getting this ball rolling on the other post.

Check out this story that Jenn linked to last year - it follows the process of getting a t-shirt made…https://www.npr.org/series/248.....rt-project

I don’t know how realistic it is going to be to find the clothes you want for the prices you show in your screen shots.

Harris Tweed is about as authentic as you can get, https://www.harristweed.org but a scarf will set you back 160 €

Jenn

(website)

https://rn.ftc.gov/Account/BasicSearch

That number isn't going to be particularly useful on those jeans. It'll tell you that the manufacturer is The Gap.

rachylou

The numbers are useful if you are looking at a more obscure label, to help you determine the actual company. Then you get a real name and location. What I’d do is start looking for financial news on the company. And health and safety reports. It’s really a huge project that will never leave one satisfied, tbh. I need eyes on the ground for any sort of happiness personally.

… so our owner wanted us to be ‘officially green’. We formed a green team and went off to work our way through this… thing… this protocol. And half way through we realised it was BS. I mean we’re actively trying to get greener, not greenwash.

If the Gap’s supplier is producing these in a way that’s beneficial to/not destructive to the surrounding community/environment, I’m happy to buy them.

One thing I’ve already noticed is that there is just one set of numbers. I assume that other pieces of clothing with tags giving a list of RAs are the ones that are cut here, sewn there, finished elsewhere, etc. So just having one could be good. But there’s more to find out than that.

Rachylou, yeah, green washing is a real problem. https://www.gapinc.com/en-us/values/sustainability includes goals that sound SMART (although that acronym is achievable & Idk if theirs are).

Jenn, hm. What’s a better way to do it? Other than knocking myself trying to find good small companies that make long bell bottom jeans, and that have a better idea of what a waist is than G-star does, I mean.

Unfortunately, that is the way to do it. This is a complex issue with hundreds of moving parts, and you're not going to get all of them to line up the way you want, so you just have to do the best you can with the information you're able to find. The more you educate yourself on topic, the better idea you have of what to look for, but you'll still have to decide what sustainable means to you and which parts of that you want to prioritize. There's no shortcut.

cat2

FI, I suggest using the location of manufacturing as a filter; something made in one of the industrialized nations will have a much greater chance of being made by employees paid fair wages and without dumping dye in a nearby river. I don’t think it’s realistic to think that anything made in China for a major mall brand is going to be green. So you have to commit to buying fewer and more expensive pieces, from a different mix of green and local brands, instead of going with the lowest cost option.

Thanks Jenn—I know you have put in time to find sources that work for you.

Cat2, I know you haven’t followed my story very long, but what you suggest is the shortcut I’ve been using, buying things made in the EU, where labor and environmental practices are higher and better enforced. That also reduces the transport of items as they are being manufactured, which is itself a problem. But that doesn’t support those small producers in underdeveloped countries that are trying to produce sustainably. You are correct, of course, that the Gap is anything but small. As I mentioned upthread, if these pants are part of their global initiative to go greener, then I’d be happy to support them. As you saw in the thread where I was exploring brands here, where you commented on the Seasalt dress, water use is one of my main concerns. It’s big companies that are the problem there, so supporting their efforts—actual changes, not just well-written prose—to change their processes makes sense to me. You mention China—they are particularly opaque, so I probably wouldn’t buy things from there, but that isn’t where the label in the photo says these jeans are made.

ETA. Oh jeez—I hadn’t even thought about GMO seeds! https://theconversation.com/ho.....aso-144959
Really, this whole topic has me wanting to go dig out all my old teaching materials. I covered these issues in class, but from the perspective of political-economic changes and their impacts on producers & regions, not from a consumer perspective.

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