Hi Carolyn,
Thanks for asking! We reached out to J Crew & Madewell’s Director of Sustainability and got no reply on the sourcing of their cotton. But from what I can understand reading the description of their jeans, none are made with fair trade cotton. Some are made with organic cotton but no mention of the sourcing on those. Since the default for cotton is pretty unfair, it’s up to them to prove that they’re doing something different—one of the principles of fair trade is transparency, so they should be prepared to live up to that if they’re making a fair trade claim. If they’d respond to our letter, or to the letters of anyone else who has emailed about this, I’d love to hear it.
So, our sources are their ads, which are rather misleading, and then the absence of other information. Let me know if you still have questions! –Anna