fashion

Sustainable Fashion Primer: The ideas, issues, & inspiration

Imagine an item of clothing you treasure. What sparks that joy? Perhaps it is the aesthetics, the pattern and color, fit and drape, or the texture and feel of the fabric on your skin; perhaps the memories meshed in the weave of the garment. What we wear conveys who we are, or who we seek to be. Without saying anything at all, a tiny beanie speaks volumes (you’re a barista and spend your free time ingratiating yourself with local bands). Clothing can be an exciting, liberating space to experiment with identity, 

Return to your treasured item of clothing and consider its path to you. How far can you trace it back? Was it bought (new or secondhand), or gifted to you? Made by a friend or loved one? No matter how individual our style, our clothes tie us to others—socially and emotionally, materially and economically.

These ties are central to the vision of sustainable fashion. Sustainable fashion is a movement, a resistance, a revolution dedicated to alleviating the drastic environmental and social impacts of the current industry model. Style should not compromise human lives and the planet’s wellbeing. At its core, sustainable fashion demands and dreams of a world where clothes support the environment and empower both makers and wearers.

Wait -- what exactly is fashion?

How do we define fashion itself? It is an invisible system guiding our desires, driven as much by the social impulse to participate in something larger than oneself and the individual need to express identity. Cultural scholar Joanne Entwistle has wrestled with the definition of fashion in her work, The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress & Modern Social Theory. Taking an academic’s lens to the many scholarly definitions of fashion, Entwistle focuses on three components:

1.  Fashion emerges as a system in societies enabling social mobility 

2.  Fashion involves a certain relationship of production and consumption, based on factory production, retail sale, and consumer disposal

3.  Fashion is “characterized by an internal logic of regular and systematic change.”

According to this definition, the wheels of fashion turn on scarcity. The sense that new trends are always bubbling up, that you have to stay in touch with, propels the system forward. Those of us attuned to these tides find ourselves chasing the right balance of trendiness and originality, to show we know what is in but never follow blindly. So does the powerful sense that clothing will grant you access to a higher social strata—that if we just dress the part, we might slip through the porous class barriers. 

This constantly shifting terrain may strike some as at odds with the slow ethos. How can we ever reconcile sustainability with the rapid trend cycles, flashy runway shows, exclusivity, overproduction, and exploitation that seem so deeply ingrained in fashion? 

Buried within the etymology of “fashion” hides a kernel of possibility for another relationship to clothing. “Fashion” evolved from the Latin facere, “to do, or make,”  and is deeply connected to the act of creation. Fashion can be a radical creative act of constructing, communicating, celebrating identity, and connecting with a group. The spirit of slow fashion attempts to reconnect to this root, while imagining new relationships with clothing that do not exploit humans or the environment.

If you feel disoriented by overlapping terms, you’re not alone—it's difficult to capture these complex ideas in a neat phrase. There’s a lot to tackle! Developing a more sustainable fashion system requires creativity and action at multiple levels. While developing innovative new practices, such as developing new textiles, is important, it is just as valuable to look back to the past. Practices such as making, mending, and rewearing were commonplace before the rise of fast fashion…let us not, as they say, reinvent the wheel.

Word Soup: What do all these terms actually mean?

Though these terms all have their own nuances, they are all grounded in the desire to rethink our relationship to clothing. Before we get into the history of the fashion system and the rise of fast fashion, a quick term check is in order!

• Sustainable fashion - seeks an environmentally responsible fashion system. This term often centers efforts to address the environmental impacts of clothing production, particularly water use, pollution and runoff, and textile waste. 

  • There are lots of ideas for how to create a sustainable fashion system! Some common action points are: 

    • creating textiles from renewable materials

    • building producer and consumer habits to keep clothing in use

    • designing durable garments

    • establishing systems to support recirculation, reclamation, and recycling of materials 

• Ethical fashion - holds fashion design, production, and consumer behavior should positively impact humans, animals, society, and the environment. 

  • Fashion industry labor practices are a primary target for ethical concerns, as garment workers routinely experience dangerous working conditions, long hours, and below livable wages. 

[Read: “Ethical Fashion vs. Sustainable Fashion: What’s the Difference & How Do They Intersect?”]

• Slow fashion - centers on extending the life cycle of garments and cultivating a mindful connections to our clothing

  • Fashion theorist Hazel Clark lays out the core principles of slow fashion as:

    • employs collaboration to deconstruct hierarchies embedded in the fashion system

    • embraces reusing materials

    • seeks to rekindle the joy of making

    • challenges fixation on trends 

• Fast fashion - refers to the manufacturing model that dominates industrial garment production today, driven by fastest possible production at the lowest costs 

  • Some key characteristics of fast fashion are:

    • cheap clothing marketed in rapid trend cycles, 

    • often lowering costs by outsourcing production and manufacturing across the globe as well as using lower quality materials

    • diffuse, opaque supply chains (make it challenging to hold companies accountable for the labor practices and environmental impacts of the clothing produced)

[Read: “Fast fashion, explained.”]

Unpacking fast fashion: how did we get here?

Fast fashion has only recently emerged, driven by pushing costs lower to create more products at a cheaper price point. Companies such as Zara and Forever 21 pioneered the rapid swapping of trend cycles in mall stores, motivating consumers to return routinely and pick up the latest styles. The amount of clothing consumed has steadily been increasing. According to research forum McKinsey, the amount of clothing we are producing globally has doubled in the last 20 years, since the rise of fast fashion. 

rise of fast fashion

Faster fashion? Our Digital Reality

Fast fashion began in brick and mortar stores. Recently, an even more intense iteration—ultra-fast fashion—has emerged, preying on the dynamics of the digital sphere and the intersecting influences of social media and online shopping. Ultra-fast fashion comprises the latest iteration of this spiral of cheap clothing marketed in rapid trend cycles. Shoppers once flocked to malls, desperate to snatch the latest designs before they were replaced with whole new swaths of clothing to covet. Now, online retailers push cheap clothing in even faster cycles, unhindered by the costs and requirements of maintaining a physical store, and shoppers peruse page upon page of low-cost clothing. Online fast fashion retailers release new designs on an even faster timeline— the exclusively online brand Asos releases nearly 7,000 new designs a week.    

Who hasn’t scrolled through social media or mindlessly shopped online, filling carts and saving posts, and been gripped by the intense conviction that you simply must have that top, or those shoes? Online shopping places vast amounts of clothing at our fingertips. In 2021, online fashion retail in the United States amounted to 180.5 billion dollars. 

Social media increases the visibility of mundane life, illuminating previously unrecorded moments—walking to class, grabbing a coffee, reading in a picturesque field. Knowing these moments are cemented in pixels for audiences of followers, it is little surprise we feel compelled to curate outfits conveying our excellent taste or irreverent vibe. And with the siren songs of TikTok microtrends (super specific, super short) pulling us in new directions every few months, the pressure to purchase new clothes looms large. 

The boundaries between personal social media and marketing are melting into an algorithm-driven soup of highly targeted ads and influencers sponsored by brands to promote products. The distance between absorbing a trend and purchasing—space that might have been devoted to thinking through whether a purchase is really worth it—is rapidly shrinking. A few decades ago, trends were transmitted via magazines, television, and the school yard; purchasing required going to the store and seeking out the item. In 2020, Instagram incorporated a shop platform to support selling goods directly from the app. One can now scroll through Instagram, see an influencer promoting a cute top or a TikTok haul of fast fashion items, and purchase within minutes—no journey to the store necessary. 

Technology and social media have exacerbated the consumer culture that fast fashion feeds on, perpetuating cycles of overproduction and overconsumption. The affinity between fast fashion and the digital sphere, fueled by a thirst for instant gratification, reveals how important it is to take time to purchase with intention and slow down consumption habits.

But if you’re not ready to break from the internet entirely, seek out those attempting to carve out pockets for sustainable and slow fashion amidst the cacophony of consumption. Sure, being a slow fashion influencer might be a moral quandary but few things aren’t these days. If you are struggling to fully disappear from the internet, better to fill your feed with folks creatively re-working their existing wardrobe than “haul” videos reinforcing hyper-consumption as the resting norm. For no matter how much we might want to hit a hard reset and obliterate social media from the earth, it’s with us for the foreseeable future—why not co-opt the connectivity to cultivate sustainable fashion conversations?  

[check it out: A list of sustainable fashion voices (from Sustainably Kind Living)]

Online platforms have also increased the potential for small creators to reach wider audiences, making it more accessible to support their work. (Unfortunately, it’s also increased the rate with which fast fashion brands rip off the designs of dedicated independent creators—the internet is a sword with many edges). As with most things, our digital connections have many different possibilities. 

The biggest takeaway? Tread carefully through the thickets of influencers and sponsored posts, consciously seek out those engaging honestly in dialogue about our relationship to clothing, and use online shopping to support the work of small creators rather than feed the fast fashion machine. 

Sustainable fashion: slow down, move with intention, & embrace creativity

Breaking with fast fashion doesn’t have to be the death knell of creativity, personal expression, and joy that comes from putting together an outfit that fills you with confidence, that puts the spring in your step. All these things are possible with sustainable and slow fashion. Practicing sustainable fashion offers exciting facets for personal creativity, learning new skills, and deepening our awareness and gratitude for those around us.

“make more space for yourself, not more stuff.”

-- Aja Barber, sustainable fashion writer, Consumed

Slowing down is imperative. Filling our lives with activities, people, and habits that ground us makes us less likely to try and patch up holes in our lives with purchases. Barber’s are wise words to remember in all areas of life, not just shopping for clothes.  These all support a more grounded and fulfilling existence, and are a valuable step away from the culture of mindless overproduction and overconsumption wreaking havoc on the environment and labor systems.

It’s a process—below are some small starting steps!

Sustainability looks different on everyone

Inclusive sizing

Finding inclusive sizing can be challenging at thrift stores, particularly if one doesn’t have the time to search through racks of disorganized clothing. The proliferation of curated online second hand shops increases the accessibility of a wide range of sizes (ThredUp, Depop, the RealReal). There are also brands working to have a positive social and environmental impact who are centering inclusive sizing—they’re not always perfect, but there are options for those of all sizes to embrace a sustainable fashion journey.

• “16 Size Inclusive and Affordable Sustainable Brands You Need to Know” (Solene Rauturier, Good On You) 

• “What Are the Best Plus-Size Sustainable Fashion Brands?” (Dominique Pariso, New York Mag) 

Pricing / Cost

One of the primary criticisms of sustainable fashion is that the higher prices of sustainably-made products bar many from accessing them, making it an exclusionary and elitist market. Certainly, sustainable brands should strive to lower prices to increase accessibility, but notice how consumerism has crept back into the conversation. 

Framing purchasing new items as the primary way to practice sustainability prioritizes consumption over maintenance or other avenues of clothing exchange. Simply wearing and caring for our clothes as long as possible is one of the most sustainable practices we could adopt. It should be remembered that this habit has been the norm for those without the privilege to splurge regularly on new clothes. If you are really looking to shed your consumer skin, hosting a clothing swap is a zero-cost way to refresh your wardrobe and connect with friends, family, or the broader community. 

Thrifting and buying second-hand recirculates clothing already in existence, making it a sustainable option that is often cheaper than buying new. The rise in popularity of thrifting and vintage clothing has increased the number of people thrifting to resell curated items at an increased price. This phenomenon has sparked intense online debate for purportedly taking away clothing from those who shop at thrift stores out of necessity, driving up clothing prices, and feeding consumer culture. 

It's more complicated than “thrift=bad” (explore the articles below for some nuances) but you can probably feel secure thrifting in moderation and with awareness of one’s own positionality as a sustainable alternative to shopping new. Reselling, when priced up within reason to accommodate the time and labor of the reseller, can help support the circulation of second-hand clothing among those who have neither the time nor stamina to comb through every single item in a thrift store. By increasing the number of people participating in the second-hand market, reasonable reselling supports the recirculation of existing clothing. 

[Read: “How thrifting became problematic” Terry Nyugen, Vox] 

[Read: “The Ethics of Resale: Recognizing Privilege in the Second-Hand Market,” Julie Kuenneke, Remake] 

It’s true that producing sustainable and ethical clothing comes at a higher price tag than fast fashion. Responsibly sourcing materials and ensuring ethical labor conditions throughout the supply chain is no small feat, and takes money that impacts consumer prices. But remember the importance of shifting our mindsets. Viewing clothes as a durable investment, something to maintain for years, helps justify the higher prices. 

It’s about context

The cycle of fast fashion driving prices ever lower has conditioned us to expect clothing to come at rock bottom prices—Gen Z has grown up in a world saturated with fast fashion. Unlearning that expectation takes work and conscious efforts to shift how we think about purchasing clothing. Rather than simply swapping out fast fashion purchases for those from sustainable brands, hit the brakes on purchasing and invest in clothes you really need, from a company committed to sustainable and ethical practices. 

Everyone has different circumstances. For some, purchasing from fast fashion retailers might be the best option. No one should be shamed for their choices—attempting to practice sustainability is a messy process of unlearning, trying (and likely failing a bit) to build new habits, and experimenting with new ways of relating to our clothes. Coming together with others to support one another in this journey and openly engage with these questions can make things less daunting. Surrounded by a community, it can even be fun and exciting.

Unravel seeks to hold space and build community among those interested in developing connections to clothing that are more local, personal, intentional, sustainable, and ethical.

We welcome all levels of prior knowledge about sustainable fashion and want to meet you where you are—whether that be just starting to learn about the social and environmental impacts of the fashion industry or years into making your own clothes. 

It can be overwhelming to balance the massive scope of the global fashion industry with your personal role. Joining the Unravel community can bring you together with others grappling with that same delicate balancing act, to inspire and support one another with creativity and vision. 

This journey will be different for everyone! It may begin with sewing a button or a patch for the first time, learning to crochet or darn a sock, or deciding to trade clothes with friends rather than purchasing new. It may look like learning a bit more about supply chains or looking into environmental impacts of laundry products. Whatever path you find yourself on, hopefully it rekindles care for your garments and cultivates a greater awareness of the threads connecting our clothes to the environment and to one another.