Category: Sustainable Fashion

As I read Eileen Fisher’s story, I was being bombarded with insights I was not yet aware of about the production of fabrics to the final product. The mention of chlorine rinsing for the preparation of wool really stood out to me. The process of taking this step out is not as much complicated, as uncommon. As I read, I was developing the idea on supply and demand. The current issue is that consumers demand what the producers put in front of them, and then I thought: What if we, collectively, demanded for awareness? {“This was basically aimed at providing the necessary information to everyone in order to make the best decisions for the company and its suppliers.”} Awareness in terms of knowing how and why the manufacturing is proceeding. With the ability to understand, maybe people would demand what EF is building from scratch. The 2020 Vision of the company sounds very inspiring, and could be displayed as a role model for many more brands. It also entails the extent of care it takes to truly consider something to be sustainable. The story of  Eileen Fisher displays how empathy, knowledge, and dedication should look like when we reference Fashion production. 

I always knew Eileen Fisher as my mom’s favorite brand, nothing more. Little did I know that it is one of the worlds most dedicated brands towards the sustainable fashion movement. I first found out about their impact when researching for Eva and I’s final, and this reading really opened my eyes further on what they’re working towards sustainability-wise. The company has so many interesting sustainability initiatives, both in-house and outreaching. They’ve shown consistent effort towards sustainable fashion advancements, even when faced with the failure of their initiatives not performing as well as they’d hoped. Most other brands would’ve reveled publicly in the fact that they’d tried to be sustainable, it didnt work out, so they were just going to go back to fast fashion business as usual. Much like Patagonia, Eileen Fisher seems to be more focused on the sustainable fashion movement than profit, and they’re trying to influence their consumers to feel the same way. They regularly partner with organizations dedicated to keeping brands honest about their sustainable fashion initiatives and producing clean products. It’s refreshing to see this approach from more brands other than just Patagonia, and if I liked the clothing they produced, I would buy more Eileen Fisher pieces. Since I don’t, I’ll just keep encouraging my mom to buy more from them than other brands.

ZINE:

VIDEO:

During our field trip, we decided to do non-participatory observation study to investigate the clothing production pipeline from the perspective of local vendors in Shanghai.

The ZINE is a ‘fashion’ inspired magazine style series that gives a brief overview of our experience at the two Shanghai Fabric Markets. The influence of True Cost is noted, because the whole day we were conducting our observations we repeatedly referenced the documentary. Through the size, we wanted to attract the viewers – thus choosing the aesthetics to be appealing to someone interested in style and clothing shopping past the basic need. We targeted this audience for the precise reason of informing them about conscious shopping. As I was editing the visual references, I often took myself as an example (past me/ prior to learning the information form this course) – this allowed me to explore the most efficient ways of raising awareness. The information I am absorbing through these practices is really resonating with me, and I would hope this wave spreads on, thus brining me to the video influence. 

I am a big fan of watching Youtube, I could even go as far as to say – a big percentage of my daily consumed information comes from this platform. Acknowledging how influential these influencers are to me, I wanted to role play and experiment with the technique of raising awareness through empathy. I wanted to video to feel very personal, as if I am talking to “my audience” as they were my friends. Through this I was able to express my feelings, as well as add visual aid from the 800 photo album we collected during our observations. Reflecting now, I could have approached this part of the assignment a little bit differently: talking through our study the way we conduced it. The issue with this is that no one past our class would be interested in seeing something as such, and I really do feel passionate about these topics – especially the ecology issues – therefore my mindset with the assignments go beyond getting points on a rubric. This plays a big part in our final project development on conscious consumption. 

I thought this article was structured really well in a way that first gave you an overview of Eileen Fisher inc and then went more in depth on each specific aspect. I was surprised by how many different sustainability and social consciousness projects the company focuses on. Usually I would think that if they’re trying to do that many things at once it wouldn’t be possible for them to be done well, however at least on paper all the company’s efforts seem true and impactful. It would be really easy to say that you’re working with sustainable companies and then just turn a blind eye to whatever they’re actually doing so I’m impressed that Eileen Fisher inc. actually follows up with and monitors each individual company, be it cotton, or fibers, or dye, to make sure they are actually following her sustainability goals.

The company also doesn’t give up when they fail, for example the article talked about how they tried to find a chlorine free wool cleaning process but the first type they tried didn’t work out. Instead of just giving up and saying it wouldn’t be possible they kept trying other things until they eventually found one that worked. This idea of not just giving up on things is especially important when it comes to sustainability. One thing thing the article didn’t mention and I wonder is if the company does any work trying to encourage other companies to be more sustainable. Maybe sharing their success story could encourage more companies to follow suit.