Category: Sustainable Fashion

Fast fashion is embedded in our consumer culture so deeply that we many times forget to recognize and thus underestimate its effects on people and the planet. The culture to look presentable at all times and adhere to constantly changing trends has made the majority of people dependent on fast fashion. Social media and attention to celebrities has made the masses eager to follow the most current trends in order to stay relevant.

According to Fletcher, the introduction of fast food in Rome undermined the important traditions of family eating and authentic regional cuisine. Similarly, fast fashion’s ever changing styles and low quality materials take away from fashion’s significance because garments are so easily exchanged, replaced, and thrown away. New styles don’t carry weight or authenticity because in just a few weeks, they’ll be seen as obsolete. Thus, the art of designing and creating fashion garments is undermined. Edelkoort similarly compares fast fashion to food items, remarking that despite the labor and design effort put into a piece of clothing, the costs sometimes still remain under the price of a sandwich consumed within minutes. When consumers can pay for a shirt in pocket change, how can people involved in designing, constructing, and distributing be properly compensated? 

Fletcher states that slow fashion cannot change the current practices within the fashion industry if it is taken superficially. Slow fashion can’t be seen as another trend of marketing tool, because so many people are currently affected and oppressed by the dominance of fast fashion. However, it will be a difficult transition to the spread of slow fashion. Fast fashion is indeed superficial in the way it constantly changes, but millions of people are not capable of supporting slow fashion because of money restrictions. Slow fashion’s high prices make it inaccessible to a large consumer group who cannot afford to spend a chunk of their paycheck on clothes. People may say that investing in a pricier sustainable garment will make the cost worth it in the long run, but many people already wear the same fast fashion garments for long periods in order to save money, just as they would with a pricier piece. Fast fashion is definitely a detrimental force, but slow fashion needs to become available to everyone in order for it to take full effect. 

Edelkoort states that men’s fashion is growing because they are currently raising more children and thus becoming more sensitive and elegant. However, fathers can’t be the only participants in men’s fashion. Raising children doesn’t necessarily lead to more fashionable taste, so I believe that Edelkoort is attributing the growth of men’s fashion to a too specific demographic. In addition, she says that men and women’s fashion should not be in the same runway show because the women’s designs upstage the men’s. I believe that instead of having to separate the two, men’s designs should become as diverse and free flowing as women’s designs are. Despite these, I appreciated Edelkoort’s tribute to powerful women and her encouragement of the success of women within a male dominated industry. 

Li Edelkoort’s “Anti-Fashion: A Manifesto for the Next Decade”

In her talk, Li Edelkoort discusses the issues with the current state of the fashion industry, mainly targeting its antiquated structures. Edelkoort states several times throughout the talk, that the industry as a whole, still thinks in a 20th century perspective. Fashion Institutions and Schools are not providing students with workspaces, ateliers, and education about textiles. This lack of education for students, and also the consumers, leaves them clueless on the subject of sustainable textiles and fabrics, perpetuating the endless cycle of wasted and unsustainable garments. 

However, to combat this issue, Edelkoort specifically offers ideas to improve and modernize the industry. For example, For manufacturers and designers to begin labeling the origin of their garments, and for brands to share more information with consumers about the resources they utilize during the manufacturing process. By enriching the consumers with useful information about sustainability, they can also begin independently making conscious efforts to watch what they purchase. As Edelkoort stresses, there needs to be more interactivity for the consumers, different and new ways to market, educate and enrich the customer’s knowledge about their purchases. 

This type of concept reminded me of places such as farmers markets, where each product has an origin story, linked to a farmer or a manufacturer, and etc. By putting a face behind the product, it humanizes the product itself, forcing consumers to put more thought into what they purchase. 

Kate Fletcher’s “Slow Fashion: An Invitation for Systems Change”

In Kate Fletcher’s paper, She describes the rise of the “fast” and “slow” fashion movements, and both of their social and ecological effects on the world. Beginning with fast fashion, Fletcher describes the mass produced, environmentally harming process, as a tool for companies to quickly and easily cash in on consumer’s money. As Fletcher states, “Fast fashion is fashion shaped not by speed but by a set of business practices focused on achieving continual economic growth; the most universally accepted goal in the world”. Mainly driven by monetary value and economic growth, companies of the fast fashion industry care less about the environment and sustainability, rather, the different ways in which to continually sell the same product over and over, for seasons on end. 

Additionally, the fast fashion industry have also contributed to the devaluing of clothing.  As stated by Fletcher, “Big-box” retailers create a dynamic that prioritizes cheapness, mass availability, and volume purchasing above all else and that forces smaller producers, who cannot compete on price alone, out of business.” By setting the standard for clothing price so low, consumers will value them less, making them easier to dispose of, contributing to large amounts of un-recyclable trash. Doing some additional research, I discovered that, according to the Fashion Industry Waste Statistics by EDGE, “Consumers throw away shoes and clothing [versus recycle], an average of 70 pounds per person, annually.” Combined with the large amounts of textile waste and clothing, all of these materials end up in trash dumps or landfills, un-recyclable and unable to be repurposed.  

Reflection on Kate Fletcher’s “Slow Fashion: An Invitation for Systems Change.”:  

In her article, Fletcher begins by defining fast and slow fashion and the inherent environmental, economic, and social problems caused by the fast fashion trend of today. She then discussed the way companies and society at large proposes solutions to the problem of fast fashion. She explains, “Slow culture, rather being allowed to seed a radical new approach, gets passed through the sieve of understanding and hierarchy of priorities and goals prevalent in today’s industry and becomes absorbed not as high-level systems change (where the rules and goals of the industry are transformed) but as a marketing angle or alternative distribution channel in the current model, a tweaked version of today’s practices.” (Fletcher 263). While reading this section of her article, I was struck with how this “tweaked version of today’s practices” plays out in fast fashion clothing stores I myself used to shop at. I recall one day shopping at H&M and seeing a sign behind the check-out counter advertising a clothing return/recycling system where customers could bring back old clothing to be reused/recycles and in exchange get a 10% off discount on their next purchase. I watched a documentary at another time about the fast fashion industry which explained this new marketing strategy. Stores such as H&M, Levi’s, Forever 21, etc are now offering incentives for people to return their old clothing. While this is marketed as a move to try to be more sustainable (i.e a solution to the fast fashion problems of today), the true purpose behind this advertising is to get people to come back and use their discount to buy even more fast-fashion items. Through this approach, consumers feel like they are being more sustainable, while in reality this clothing return system rarely helps sustainability efforts. Because so many fast fashion clothes are made from mixed fibers, it is often difficult for companies to actually turn many of the donated clothes into new products, and it takes a lot of energy to do so. Many of these companies also advertise that they are sending old clothing to poorer countries so they can be reused by locals, instead of being thrown away.  However in actuality, many of these clothes do not get bought by locals in these countries and just end up being thrown away in those countries instead of being thrown away by the company itself. It is clear to me that such marketing strategies are examples of the misconstrued Slow Fashion solution Fletcher discusses in her article. While companies act like they are providing a solution to the fast fashion problem, in reality they are providing solutions which only benefit their own sales and often do not offer any sustainable benefits along the way. This article makes me more determined to question “sustainability” efforts made by companies and provides incentive for me to simply not support these fast fashion companies in the first place, even if they claim to be focused on sustainability. 

Reflection on Li Edelkoort’s “Anti-Fashion: A Manifesto for the Next Decade”: 

As part of her talk, Li shows a movie about a weaving factory which exemplifies a local, slow fashion model. She argues the need for “Labeling the origin, content and labour of a product to better comprehend price” as a new form of marketing strategy that could change the future of fashion. I think such labeling would be a crucial step in encouraging consumers to make smarter, more sustainable fashion choices. As Li exemplifies in her talk, it is not possible to provide a 10 pound evening gown without there being some kind of unethical, unsustainable methods involved in its production.  While some may claim that it is the burden of clothing companies to employ sustainable methods in the making of their products, it is also, I believe, on the collective consumer to demand, through their purchasing decisions, sustainable, slow fashion products. However it can sometimes be difficult for every-day consumers to sort which companies and what fashion items are sustainable and ethical, and so labeling the origin, content and labor of a product would be an easy way for people to make better choices about what they are buying. I myself would find this labeling system extremely helpful when making purchasing decisions. 

I found Li’s talk interesting, because she discusses various ways to fundamentally change the fashion industry to have a “voice” for the 21st century. She doesn’t reject clothing and fashion outright, but instead claims that the current structure of the industry is out of date and inconsistent with our society’s current structure and values.  I think her approach is useful as a method to work with the system to create change, and perhaps it can be combined with other sustainability efforts to create positive future change.