Name: Mehr Un Nisa Javed
Professor: Nimrah Syed
Date: 24th Feb ‘ 2019
Title: “The life-cycle of the fashion garment and the role of Australian mass market designers”
Objective: Reading Response
Reading Response:
The main issue raised by the reading was that how the Australian mass market leads to harmful environmental impacts and the possibilities for sustainability in the Australian mass market. After that life-cycle assessment is done to evaluate the impact of of the products produced. After that the speed in the market is analyzed and links it with the fast fashion where the clothes are considered as a disposable commodity. Further, the fibre use is discussed where it can be seen that mostly people prefer to buy the cheaper fibre such as polyester and when in 2010, the prices of cotton rose then the people switched more towards cotton-grade polyester so they could have a cheap substitute. This shows that people care less for the environment and so the demand for natural fibers further decreased because they are very costly to consume. Later, the writer covers all the phases of the garment life cycle such as textile production, garment design, manufacturing, distribution, retail, garment use and Disposal, reuse and cradle-to-cradle alternatives. In all these phases mainly the environmental impacts are assessed.
I really liked this reading because it is like a business cycle where are the phases are discussed which would make the readers more conscious about their choices and most importantly, it creates awareness amongst the producers/retailers who would go through each stage and could possibly minimize the harmful impact by ethical practices. However, at the same time they would be challenged by doing all ethical and environmental friendly practices. For example, a retailer or producer could get at loss because since he would be doing everything in a more suitable way the he would need to increase the prices which would in turn affect the consumers base.
Overall, this reading had some great lessons but I believe, it is still quite difficult to implement the theory into reality.