Author: arh522

When designing a collection, fashion designers have an important decision to make: do they make something for everyone, or do they instead make something that’s everything to someone? In the past decades, designers often opted for the second choice, developing their niche consumer who was obsessed with everything surrounding only the designers brand. In recent years, however, this has changed. With the influx of “Logomania” style clothing, brands like Gucci and Balienciaga have started multi-faceted collection launches. What they present on the runway are beautiful pieces set for high paying and celebrity clients. However, on their sites and in department stores, there are clothing basics like jeans and shirts all embalzoned with their logos. These are often not as carefully sourced or made as their more artful pieces, but they sell well. Because these brands are trying to please large swaths of people, they are contributing horribly to fashion-related pollution. Lauren Hethorn argues that by treating customers as a large group instead of focusing on their individual nature, the fashion industry will never escape this fast fashion problem. She identifies that the industry has not identified their consumer as a user, but simply a part of a larger mass. Because of this, clothing is either fashionable or comfortable, with hardly any overlap. In the tech industry, however, app developers focus on one specific type of person and how they’d interact with their product. Then, when the app is released, they take more and more user feedback until the app is useful to more and more users. If the fashion industry treats their customers like the tech industry treats theirs, we will see a great change for the better in terms of sustainable fashion. 

Are “eco-friendly” tags really enough to keep the sustainable fashion movement going forward? Is a return-to-basics, “all natural” approach really the best option when trying to combat fast fashion? So many fashion consumers have been frustrated by this message, and unwilling to simply throw out all that they’ve become accustomed to. Sarah Scaturro explains that this “all natural” push in sustainable fashion is not the answer, although it may factor a bit into the larger solution. Instead of using technological advancements to create more and more cheap, non-degradable synthetic fibers for the sake of profit, we should use technology to create solutions for the fashion problems of tomorrow. She instead argues that we should work with recent technological advancements instead of against them, and to not exclusively look backwards for answers that no longer apply to the fashion world of today. 

I was thouroughly interested in Scatturo’s analysis of technological advancements and how they’re contextualize in the modern world. She accurately points out that technology is closely intertwined with economic pursuits, and that this has greatly affected the reputation of technological advancements. For this reason, it is difficult for people and brands to separate the money and profit focused image from the value of technological advancements towards sustainability. If this cognitive dissonance is not corrected soon, the sustainable fashion movement will only have the “all natural” approach, which Scatturo has already identified is not enough. For there to be a positive future of sustainable fashion, we must learn to embrace technology as an ally, not a hindrance. 

The usual images of sustainable fashion conjured in the minds of the fashion consumer are brown/rough fabrics, ill-fitting and bland pieces, and generally unfashionable fashion. This is wholly uninspiring to the average consumer, leading them to ignore the sustainable fashion movement altogether. However, in her piece “The Life-Cycle of the Fashion Garment and the Role of Australian Mass Market Designers,” Alice Payne offers several solutions to correct the above assumption about sustainable fashion. Payne is not speaking to the consumers; she is focusing on the possibilities in sustainable design rather than simply blaming the consumer. She uses Australia as a case study, but it is clear that she is optimistic about her results if amplified on a worldwide scale. 

I found her ”Garment use” section the most interesting. I have often mentioned in class the importance of intent behind design in furthering the sustainable fashion movement. When intent is removed from the design process, fashion pieces become disposable. Payne elaborates that in Australia, clothing retailers are beginning to realize the potential of this intent behind design, from designing clothing that doesn’t need to be washed so often to involving “services” with the purchase of a fashion piece. I am also optimistic that this will work worldwide, but fashion companies will not adapt without the demand of a sustainability-conscious consumer. 

This essay——probably by course design——could not have come at a better time. My partner and I are at a complete loss for what we’d want to do our final project on, much less what ethnographic research methods we would employ. Everything we were coming up with didn’t seem to work because we would need an extremely long time to conduct our research. Pink and Morgan really stress that ethnographic research done in a shorter timeline is not “limited” or inferior, but rather another tool to observe human behavior and draw inferences. The authors emphasize that with the higher-paced setting of short-term ethnographical research, it is in some ways a better reflection of the human experience and “being in (and with) the world.” This research method is useful because it demands the researcher understand more about the space they’re entering, without the guise of endless time to figure it out. Short-term ethnographic research in my opinion is superior to a longer timeframe because it asks more of the researcher and offers more reward for time spent. However, this depends on the researcher. If they’re simply looking for an opportunity to publish and are not invested in the social environment they’re researching, the short-term ethnographic research method will not yield good results. In fact, because of the mentioned reasearcher’s unwillingness to immerse themselves wholly in their subject, this method may actually damage and contradict anything the researcher had prepared beforehand. My partner and I feel very confident that we can comfortably and efficiently use the short-term ethnographic research method to our advantage for our final project.

This idea of something being “accidentally sustainable” was something I came across last year. I was waiting in line to pay at a Zara and I saw this tiny, makeup-removing microfiber towel. At the time, I solely used cotton pads to remove the day’s dirt off my face, often using two or more pads a day. After buying and using the towel once, I was hooked. I did not set out that day to find something to make my daily routine/life more sustainable, and yet I came across and bought an item that did just that. Am I allowed to feel proud of doing so? Am I just doing the bare minimum, and nothing will make up for buying clothing at Zara in the first place? This oscillation between good consumer versus bad consumer is a main fixture of Professor Sophie Woodward’s chapter “Accidentally Sustainable? Ethnographic Approaches to Clothing Practices.” Woodward is done with the idea that the consumer simply buys clothing because they’re a victim of the fast fashion system. She’s even less tolerant of the argument that consumers are the villains in the fast fashion system, buying clothing for the sole purpose of its disposability. Instead, she clarifies that the consumer buys a fashion product in their own “specific personal, relational, and social contexts.” Woodward, like Edelkoort, disagrees with the sustainable fashion philosophy of making every stage of the fast fashion industry start from square one. Instead, she argues that we can trust the average consumer and designer to choose/design fashion products with longevity, intent and continued use in mind. This way, much more fashion products will go the way of the American blue jean, a lauded and memory-filled addition to any wardrobe, and one that is rarely thrown out.8