Running a small clothing brand makes you impossible to shop with. I'll pick something up and know within thirty seconds whether it's going to last, the weight of the fabric, the way the seams are finished, whether the softness is the fiber itself or a coating that'll wash out after a few cycles. My kids don't fully appreciate this skill yet. My oldest finds it particularly annoying. She's at the age where everyone is wearing those polyester mini dresses, and my answer is always no.
What I've learned, after five years of making things I'd want against my own kids' skin, is that most of what makes a garment good is invisible until it isn't. Until the color holds after fifteen washes, until the dress is still intact enough that a second kid wants to wear it. Here's what to actually look for.
The Problem With Most Kids' Clothing
Most children's clothes, even ones sold at mid-range price points, are made from polyester, acrylic, or cotton-poly blends. These materials are cheap, hold their shape well, and photograph beautifully. They are also petroleum-derived, meaning polyester and acrylic are plastic, essentially, and they shed microplastics every time you wash them.
Beyond the environmental piece, there's the finish layer. "Wrinkle-resistant," "moisture-wicking," and "stain-repellent" fabrics are usually coated in chemicals to achieve those properties. Some of them (formaldehyde-releasing resins, perfluorocarbons (PFCs)) have real health concerns, particularly for kids whose skin is thinner and more permeable than ours. And then there are the dyes. Conventional azo dyes, which show up constantly in fast fashion, can break down into carcinogenic compounds. The regulations vary wildly depending on where a garment was produced.
None of this means every synthetic garment is actively dangerous. But it does mean you're often getting less than the label implies, fabrics that feel fine until they don't, that shed plastic into the wash water, and that fall apart before a younger sibling ever gets a turn in them.
The Fibers Worth Knowing
Not all natural fibers are equal. Here's what I actually look for, and why.
Organic Cotton
This is where I'd start for everyday wear. Conventional cotton is one of the most pesticide-intensive crops in the world. Organically grown cotton skips those inputs, which is better for the farmers, the soil, and the water supply near those farms. And it's better for your kid's skin, which is in contact with that fabric for most of their waking hours.
Organic cotton is breathable, soft, and (this is the part that always surprises people) it gets softer with washing. Not coarser. Softer. Unlike synthetic blends, which often go the other direction, a well-made organic cotton garment improves with use.
Baby Alpaca
This one sounds fussy, but stay with me. Baby alpaca is the fiber from the first shear of an alpaca's life, the softest clip the animal will ever produce. It's naturally lanolin-free (so no irritation for lanolin-sensitive skin), incredibly warm, and has a natural luster that doesn't require any chemical treatment to achieve.
We've worked with baby alpaca from Peru since League of Friends launched, same manufacturer, same region, same husband-and-wife team whose daughter was our original fit model. The sweaters and cardigans we make from it look just as good after three years as they did the first season. That kind of longevity is not typical in this industry.
Wool Blends
Merino wool is softer than you'd expect. Fine-gauge merino, especially, is nothing like the itchy wool of childhood memory. It regulates temperature better than cotton, warmer when it needs to be, cooler when it's not, and it's naturally moisture-wicking without any added finish. Our cardigans use baby alpaca blended with merino wool, two natural fibers that complement each other, giving you warmth, softness, and durability without any synthetic content. A well-made blend like this will outlast most anything else in your kid's drawer.
How Fiber Quality Actually Affects Durability
Here's the thing about natural fibers: they're designed to be used. Cotton is a plant that evolved specifically to have its fibers pulled apart and reassembled. Wool grew on an animal that lived outside in the rain. These materials are inherently more resilient at the fiber level than plastics spun into thread.
Synthetic fabrics pill because the plastic fibers break and tangle. They degrade under UV exposure. They hold odor in ways that natural fibers don't. Wool in particular has antimicrobial properties that mean you can wear it more times between washes. The "softness" of a cheap polyester fleece doesn't improve with time. It gets coarser, fuzzier, more worn-looking.
Natural fibers, when well-made, do the opposite. They break in. They get better.
Parents love finding our pre-loved pieces at pop-ups and online because they hold up so well, a dress that's still beautiful after one kid has a natural next chapter with the next. That's what a good fiber can do, and it's why we're not interested in making things that only survive one chapter.
What to Actually Look for on a Label (And Beyond It)
This is where it gets practical. Because "natural fiber" is not a protected term. Anyone can put it on a label. Certifications can help, but they tell an incomplete story. Here's how to read them honestly.
GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard)
GOTS is the most rigorous certification in this space. It covers not just the fiber itself but the entire production process, the dyeing, the finishing, the working conditions at the mill. What most people don't realize is that GOTS certification applies at each step of the supply chain separately. A fiber or yarn can be GOTS-certified at the mill level without the finished garment carrying full garment-level certification.
Full garment-level GOTS certification requires every step in the chain to be independently audited, which is expensive and logistically difficult, especially for small-batch makers working with small family-run factories. A brand can be sourcing GOTS-certified organic cotton, working with a mill that meets every standard, and still not carry the garment-level certification simply because of the cost of the audit. That doesn't mean the standards aren't being met. It means the paperwork is expensive. Many of the organic cotton fibers we source come from GOTS-certified mills. Our knitting and sewing factories are small operations that can't always absorb the cost of full garment-level certification, though they already follow the same strict production standards.
So: GOTS certification on a label is a strong positive signal. But its absence doesn't mean a brand is cutting corners.
Other Certifications Worth Knowing
Fair Trade certification addresses labor practices and supply chain transparency, and is worth looking for, especially alongside a fiber certification. Bluesign and similar standards cover responsible chemical use in dyeing and finishing. None of these certifications, individually or together, tell you whether the garment is well-constructed. A certified dress can still have weak seams and thin fabric. The certification tells you about the material and process. You still have to evaluate the construction yourself.
The Better Question: Just Ask
Here's what I've come to believe: the brands doing things right can tell you exactly what they're doing. They know their mills. They know their fiber sources. They can tell you where the cotton was grown, how the yarn was spun, and who sewed the garment. They might not publish all of it publicly, but if you ask, they answer.
The brands that can't answer those questions, or respond with vague language about "responsible sourcing" and "ethical partners," are often the ones with something to obscure. Transparency isn't hard when you have nothing to hide.
So ask. Email the brand. Ask where the fiber comes from. Ask who makes it. Ask what certifications the mill holds, even if the finished garment doesn't carry them. A small brand that's genuinely doing the work will appreciate the question. And their answer will tell you more than any label.
The Real Cost Equation
$110 for a kids' dress feels like a lot. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't.
But here's honest math: a dress worn 35 times by your first kid, then passed to a sibling who wears it another 35 times, is 70 wears, and at $110, that's under $2 per wear. That's a reasonable number. But the math isn't even the strongest argument.
The stronger argument is that at the end of those 70 wears, the dress still looks like a dress. It hasn't pilled, faded into something unrecognizable, or lost its shape. Your second kid is wearing it because they want to, because it's still worth wearing. A $14 fast-fashion piece that fades in three washes and pills by fall? You're not running a cost-per-wear calculation on that. You're just buying another one.
That's not a justification for what we charge. It's a framework for how to think about value in a category that's been trained to reward cheapness over the long view.
Our trade-back program exists because we believe in this math. When your child outgrows a League of Friends piece, you can bring it back and get store credit toward your next purchase. We clean it, photograph it, and resell it at a reduced price, because good clothes deserve more than one chapter. The goal is for every piece we make to have as many wearers as it can hold.
The short version: look for transparency, not just labels. Ask questions. Feel the weight. Check the seams. Wash it once and see what happens.
We're making fewer pieces on purpose, in small batches, from materials we'd want next to our own kids' skin all day. That's the whole point.
xoxo Megan