Response to Kate Fletcher’s “Slow Fashion: An Invitation for Systems Change”:
Kate Fletcher’s written voice could not be more similar to Li Edelkoort’s own spoken voice. Both women have a strained, anger-filled plea aimed at all those who engage in fashion products in any capacity. In this incredibly passionate paper, Fletcher illustrates just how insidious the fast fashion industry’s effect on humanity and society has been. She equates it to the fast food movement: both traded familial values and tradition for newness and short-term convenience. She clarifies that “fast” is not necessarily bad; the speed alone of how fashion products are made is not to blame for fast fashion’s pernicious consequences. Instead, the business culture of “growth by any means necessary” that lies within “fast” for any industry is what ultimately leads to long term ethical, environmental, and societal damage.
Fletcher’s paper is the only position I have read that focuses enough, if any, attention on the impact fast fashion has on our society. She emphasizes that having more things does not add to one’s life in any meaningful way. The way she juxtaposes previous values standards for fashion products versus current ones is intense to read. Once the durability, memory, and lifespan of a garment were its most important qualities. Now, however, the flexibility, adaptability, and disposability of a fashion product are its main selling points. Fletcher suggests looking to the food indusry’s fight against fast food chains for suggestions on how to manage fashion’s “fast” problem.
Response to Li Edelkoort’s “Anti-Fashion: A Manifestó for the Next Decade”:
Li Edelkoort’s talk on sustainability at the Business of Fashion’s Voices conference was refreshing for one reason: where most sustainability activists only present problems, Edelkoort only provided her audience with solutions. The audience was full of fashion professionals, from educators to ad men, and they were all hooked on her every word. Edelkoort doesn’t mince words; she identified problems at every phase a fashion product goes through and immediately suggested several solutions to these quandaries. She started with the education issue. Fashion design students, Edelkoort argues, are not being taught worksmanship and creation of garments, simply the conjuring of them. She claims that in order to create sustainable designers, they must be accurately taught just how much work goes into a fashion product, how working with certain textiles affects the end product, and how to ensure that product quality is controlled. Edelkoort also tackles the underrepresented textile industry. Because fast fashion retailers so often opt for cheaper synthetic fabrics, the textile industry is barely treading water. She is a world-reknown trend forecaster, so to hear Edelkoort explain just how in peril the textile and fabric market is was jarring to me. She explains that fashion houses must buy textile mills in order to ensure quality fabrics, made sustainably and with care, will not become a thing of the past.
“Sometimes, when you buy a t-shirt, you kill somebody; it’s better to buy fur.” This quote from the video stuck with me. On Monday, I mentioned in class that it is not sustainable enough to just focus on fixing fashion’s environmental consequences and ignore the ethical ramifications, and vice versa. Although she said it with a hint of sarcasm, the hidden meaning is not so difficult to find. What lives are we prioritizing? The consumer with more than enough options to meet their daily needs? The disadvantaged worker in an outsourced Nike factory with no other job prospect? The fashion designer struggling to keep up with ever increasing fashion seasons? The animals in cages poached for their fur? Once we are honest about which of these is our collective priority and then choose to improve on that, our collective society will move towards a more sustainable fashion route.