Everlane is loved by Meghan. Now the brand is telling us what its mark-ups are

With its chic, modern daywear made from sustainable fabrics in Fairtrade factories, it’s no wonder Meghan Markle is a fan of Everlane.

The eco-friendly, San Francisco-based brand, which launched in 2010, has seen the Duchess of Sussex through some of the most significant moments of her life. She chose a £138 Everlane tote bag for her first appearance with Prince Harry at an official royal event (the Invictus Games in Toronto in 2017), adores its £53 skinny jeans and £121 slingbacks, and wore its £94 black jumpsuit when she guest-edited British Vogue last year.

Friends say she loves its casual, affordable (and ethical) basics. But now, Everlane (which also counts Angelina Jolie and Karlie Kloss as fans) has gone a step further than the average eco-brand, by breaking down not only the provenance, but the pricing, of every item.

Shoppers can see the name and location of the factory where their piece was made, as well as the exact cost of the materials, labour and transport required to get it from drawing board to shopping bag — all part of a policy Everlane calls ‘radical transparency’.

Take its black leather jacket. The leather, which costs £80.33, starts life on a farm in New Zealand, then makes its way to a factory in New Delhi, India, where one of 102 employees is paid £14.04 and uses £6.57 worth of hardware to turn it into a jacket. It then ends up at the Everlane warehouse, via £6.05 in export duties and £3.90 in transport costs.

The ‘true cost’ of the jacket is £110.89, but it’s sold for £232, meaning Everlane is open about the £121.11 mark-up it adds.

A ‘traditional brand’, it claims, would charge £546 (a figure calculated from a rough average of competitors’ price tags), meaning the customer would pay a staggering £435.11 on top.

This open approach has been helped by canny marketing: its Choose What You Pay sale gets rid of overstocked items; and since November it has offered UK delivery, capitalising on the Meghan effect.

In a world of fast-fashion, giving customers more knowledge of the effort involved in making their clothes arguably makes them less inclined to throw them away. It’s certainly a refreshing approach.