Sustainable Workwear Picks, Curated and Rated by Good On You Co-founders

Getting dressed for work is already a daily negotiation. Getting dressed for work *ethically* has long felt like a second job: trawling certification databases, cross-referencing supply chain reports, and second-guessing whether a brand's recycled-polyester claim is progress or PR. Sandra Capponi and Gordon Renouf, who co-founded Good On You a decade ago, have spent years meeting with and supporting small, more ethical brands while advocating for consumers' right to know how fashion impacts key sustainability issues. They've done that trawling so you don't have to — and now they've put their personal wardrobes on the table.

For Good On You's latest "team picks," the platform asked its co-founders to share expert recommendations from 16 brands they truly love and have personally invested in. The result is a cross-category edit spanning menswear and womenswear, grounded in real-life professional dressing rather than runway fantasy.

Why 16 Brands, and How They Qualified

The selection didn't begin with aesthetics. Every brand featured has been independently rated as "Good" or "Great" by Good On You's analysts. That designation isn't arbitrary. Good On You's ratings consider 1,000 data points across more than 100 key issues and indicators to give a fair and comprehensive assessment of a brand's impact on people, the planet, and animals. The platform aggregates all relevant public information available from company websites, credible third-party reports, and certification schemes including Fairtrade, Cradle to Cradle, and the World Fair Trade Organisation Guarantee System.

Brands are scored across hundreds of issues and then given an overall rating ranging from "We Avoid" and "Not Good Enough," through "It's a Start," to "Good" and "Great." A "Great" designation means these brands score highly in at least two areas and usually hold one or more broad-based certifications; they are often built to be sustainable and ethical from the ground up. Earning either of the top two tiers is not a participation trophy. Good On You has raised the bar to recognise developments in best practice, and brands that haven't improved their sustainability efforts over time will likely have moved down a level.

To ensure credibility, Good On You aggregates comprehensive, transparent information on fashion and beauty sustainability, with its ratings directory covering over 6,000 fashion brands employing a simple five-point scale. The 16 brands chosen for this workwear edit represent the upper end of that scale, a curated shortlist from thousands of assessed labels.

Sandra Capponi: Minimalism With Teeth

Working from home most days, Capponi describes her wardrobe philosophy as one of minimalist comfort with a touch of luxury in the fabrics and detailing — and sustainability guides her choices throughout, so that while her style is understated, she makes a statement by choosing brands that match both her style and her values.

Based in Melbourne, Australia, Capponi's practical approach to dressing is shaped by geography as much as philosophy. She names Outland Denim, an Australian label, as a brand she has trusted for over a decade — a telling detail from someone whose entire professional life revolves around knowing which brands deserve that kind of loyalty. Her preference for neutral hues, primarily black, is something she attributes directly to Melbourne's particular aesthetic culture: a city where an all-dark wardrobe is less an austerity measure than a local uniform, making daily mixing and matching genuinely effortless.

Capponi cites amt.studio, Artknit Studios, and Lanius as labels she frequently returns to, often discovered while spending time in Europe connecting with her team and her heritage; and when running out the door, she reaches for a timeless duster, loafers, and a scarf for a pop of colour and warmth. It's a formula that travels from a home-office desk to a client meeting without adjustment: structured enough to signal professionalism, relaxed enough to survive a full day of actual work.

Gordon Renouf: Consumer Advocacy as a Wardrobe Principle

Gordon Renouf brings a different background to the co-founders' shared mission: he spent 25 years working in consumer advocacy, mostly in charities and non-governmental organisations, combining his commitment to strengthening consumer rights with a passion for justice and sustainability. That framework shapes how he thinks about purchases. For Renouf, the act of choosing a "Good" or "Great"-rated brand for workwear isn't an ethical compromise or a concession to trend — it's an extension of the same consumer rights logic he has built a career on. He and Capponi started Good On You on the belief that every consumer choice makes a difference, with a vision of a world where those choices drive businesses to be sustainable and fair — but that's only possible if consumers have comprehensive, easy-to-use information that helps them find products they love from brands they feel good buying from.

What "Ethical Workwear" Actually Means in Practice

The capsule wardrobe framing here is deliberate. Good On You's editorial team carefully reviews and approves each recommendation, upholding high standards of quality, longevity, and trend-transcendence. That combination — quality, longevity, and trend-transcendence — is the architecture of any working wardrobe worth building. It pushes back against the impulse to refresh a work wardrobe seasonally, positioning each piece as an investment rather than a placeholder.

Good On You's ratings assess how each brand treats its workers, including labour rights, fair wages, working conditions, and supply chain transparency; evaluate the brand's environmental impact including use of sustainable materials, carbon footprint, water usage, and waste management; and assess the brand's stance on animal welfare, including use of animal products and practices related to animal testing. When a brand clears all three of those bars at "Good" or "Great" level, you're not just buying a well-made jacket. You're buying traceability.

Good On You rates brands using a simple five-point system, analysing over 1,000 data points on key issues like climate impact, worker rights, and animal welfare — which means that by the time a recommendation reaches you in an editorial like this one, the due diligence runs deep.

The Bigger Picture

Good On You was founded by Gordon Renouf and Sandra Capponi in Australia in 2015, built on the ethos "Wear the change you want to see," and designed to save consumers from hours of internet research trying to gather evidence about worker conditions, supply chain transparency, raw materials, and waste management. When it launched in Australia in 2015, the platform had more than 10,000 downloads in less than 10 days; today it is used by over one million people every month from all over the globe.

That scale matters when you consider the scope of the problem. Globally, one in six people work in the apparel sector, where labour abuses and factory disasters are common; at $2.5 trillion, fashion is also one of the most polluting industries in the world. The co-founders' workwear edit doesn't solve that. But a list of 16 vetted brands, chosen by the two people who built the most comprehensive fashion ratings system in the world, is a significantly shorter starting point than most of us have ever had.

The workwear wardrobe has always been where style meets consequence: what you wear signals who you are and what you value. The more consumers hold brands accountable, the more the industry is pushed toward a more sustainable future — that, Capponi has said, is the big goal. These picks are what that goal looks like in a wardrobe.