Clothing Cultures - Volume 5, Issue 1, 2018

Fashion is widely considered the second most destructive industry to the environment, with a global supply chain employing 58 million people worldwide. During the period of 2000–14, clothing production increased by 50 per cent, as fast-fashion evolved and the luxury sector ascended. Recently, a number of high-profile fashion designers are taking the decision to consciously depart from the constraints of the seasonal fashion calendar, enabling them to reconnect with the creative process, focusing on quality and customer experience. ‘With fashion there is too much fear, not enough time, and not enough love’ (Elbaz 2017). While sustainable fashion has often been considered a consumer-led movement, which brands have been pressured to act upon, it is important that businesses demonstrate social responsibility through a collaborative approach incorporating design, innovation, technology and communication to successfully create desirable sustainable products with integrity. With constant news updates as a result of technology and the overriding competitiveness of social media, brands need to design and launch unique products that attract attention. This article will explore the connection between sustainable design and brand identity in relation to the fashion industry. The article will identify economic and commercial business opportunities, incorporating how combining sustainable design principles with communicative story telling provides additional emotional value for both designer and consumer, and aligning brands with social and environmental issues that are directly related to the products they are selling.

What is sustainability? How do we define and approach sustainable practices? How is sustainability perceived in the context of fashion? In the current fashion industry, terms like ‘organic’ or ‘recycled’ materials are often referred to as indicators for sustainable practices. However, is this the future of sustainability in fashion? If we take one step back from the fashion world and look at how sustainable practices are pursued in other contexts, we can easily discover a blind spot that is hardly mentioned or attempted in the fashion context.

Incredible amounts of raw materials and environmental inputs are being used in an industry that has grown 60 per cent in the past fifteen years. The global clothing and apparel industry has streamlined supply chains and is working on sustainable initiatives to limit resource scarcity, but what is missing in the system is resource recovery for post-consumer textile waste. Although almost all textiles are reusable or recyclable, the vast majority (85 per cent) end up in landfills. By not being circular, the fashion industry is losing half a trillion dollars in underutilization and resource value annually. With consumers in large developing countries like Brazil, China, India, Mexico and Russia adopting current consumption rates, the system and its waste are expected to increase. The apparel industry needs to become circular and to adopt policies to reduce textile waste.

The goal of this study is to investigate the differential influences of environmental concern and fashion opinion leadership on consumer intention to purchase clothing products made from sustainable fabrics. In doing so, this study examines the mediating role of environmental attitude towards clothing consumption. The data were collected from 122 US college students with an average age of 21.4. The majority of the participants were female (83.6 per cent) and Caucasian (64.5 per cent). A weighted least squares (WLS) hierarchical regression analysis was used for the data analysis. The results suggested that fashion opinion leadership was a more powerful determinant than environmental concern in predicting consumer intention to purchase clothing products made from sustainable fabrics. However, environmental attitude towards clothing consumption did not serve as a significant mediator. These findings provide beneficial insight for fast-fashion retailers mainly targeting fashion opinion leaders. Managerial implications are discussed to delineate how fast-fashion retailers can benefit from sustainable production and retailing strategies.

The circular economy is promoted as an innovation and growth model for a garment industry widely understood to be wasteful, polluting and ripe for change. There is a growing body of knowledge related to sustainability, design, eco-innovation and business; there is, however, a scarcity of material that examines all subjects as they relate to the garment industry. There exists, in both literature and practice, a conceptual gap between the commercial viewpoint and established thinking around sustainable practices. There is a lack of research investigating operations management, buying and merchandising roles in apparel product development. Understanding the influence of these functional roles is crucial in developing strategies for closing the gap between commercial and environmentally sustainable practices and bringing innovations to market. Investment in sustainability-related knowledge and capabilities within firms is needed. Reconsidering the role of fashion designers, expanding their training and elevating them to process-leading problem-solvers could unlock new sources of value within the industry.

It is important to bear in mind as to what extent this distinction exists, or whether we can confidently say it does not exist at all. As a matter of fact, we find that with higher income, individuals spend more of their capital income on clothing. There is still an intangible class division and stratification on the street, even though it is representative. Therefore, it is important to examine the historical role played by clothing as a symbol or a form of self-expression within the social hierarchy, and to identify its antithetic aspects during post-industrial Britain and France, and from the twentieth century to present day. In this article, the principal plan is to outline the contrast between the past and the present examining two antithetic aspects of clothing within the social structure for those periods; the first era is post-Industrial Revolution in Britain and France. The intention is to explain the intensive opposition between the bourgeois, which represents the upper class, and the proletariat, which is the lower class in the mid-eighteenth century to the end of nineteenth century. The second period is the twentieth century to the present and democracy and equilibrium in fashion will be examined. Finally, class mobility through ether existing hierarchy or reduced representation (i.e. ambivalence to Democracy in fashion) as the main debate of multifaceted stratification in fashion will be elaborated and the class boundaries are increasingly blurred, yet whether we accept it or not, class distinctions still exist.

Guardian: Made in Cambodia is an ethical textiles project undertaken in response to the low-income and hazardous working conditions of garment factory workers in Cambodia. The project critically designs a range of garments that acknowledge and raise awareness of cultural manifestations of unionism in Cambodia, specifically the Neak Ta phenomenon. The garments are speculatively imagined as capable of ethical production by a small community of workers from Cambodia’s garment factories in order to (capacitate) provide a mode of production and sustainable source of income alternative to industrial factory employment. The Neak Ta phenomenon refers to mass fainting associated with land guardian spirits unique to Cambodian Animist belief. The phenomenon is regarded as a culturally appropriate form of rebellion occurring in a country where unionism is discouraged and labour protests can become violent. Guardian: Made in Cambodia applies a methodology of experimental material and processes research through textile-focused studio practice, as a means to better understand the conditions of Cambodian garment workers and the Neak Ta phenomenon. This process corresponds to a critical design approach that engages with the topic interrogatively through experimental making, in order to challenge paradigms of design and production. The resulting textile and apparel products visualize the repetitive piecework of garment factory work and the disruption caused to it by the Neak Ta phenomenon. Open and closed seams, darts and hems recall the repetitive qualities of piecework labour, disrupted by dark-toned natural dyeing techniques intended to capture and convey expressions of fainting and possession.

This article will draw upon ongoing research into design and business education for traditional artisans in India. It will focus specifically on the use of traditional crafts in the luxury Indian fashion industry, which has grown significantly in the last three decades, alongside one of the Ph.D. case studies – The Handloom School (THS) in Maheshwar, a small sari-weaving town in Madhya Pradesh state. The charitable organization WomenWeave was founded by Sally Holkar in 2003 to generate sustainable employment for women in Maheshwar and the surrounding region. While Maheshwar is known for its silk, cotton and zari (metallic yarn) fabrics and saris, WomenWeave started producing khadi (hand-spun, hand-woven yarn), which has been popular in high-end Indian and global fashion markets. THS is a recent initiative of WomenWeave, and teaches weavers from different parts of India business, design, IT and communication skills with a view to enabling them to start their own businesses and generate more sustainable livelihoods in their respective regions. Students also learn new weaving skills and multi-treddle techniques, and are encouraged to weave fabrics with more complex textures, patterns and colours than what they are used to, based on WomenWeave’s success with such fabrics. The school is in its early stages and the curriculum is continuously being revised and adapted. My recent ethnographic fieldwork in Maheshwar and other weaving regions in India has involved learning about the experiences of some of the students and graduates of THS, as well as the faculty, directors and administrative staff, over the past three years. This article will draw upon these experiences, while presenting some of the challenges the school is facing amidst a broad and lively debate on craft in India within the development, anthropological, design history and material culture discourses. I will address a number of questions such as: how can traditional craft meet the needs of the high-end fashion industry? How is education impacting ‘artisan’ and ‘designer’ collaborations and challenging the definition of these roles? Who owns traditional and other designs, and whose identity is expressed in the final product? It also explores how weavers are combining their traditional weaving skills gained in the home, along with institutionalized learning of business and design concepts; and to what extent education enables weavers to create products attuned to a contemporary market.

Fashion is now fast and disposable. The current product–service system for fashion ensures that unwanted items are quickly abandoned in favour of the next shiny new thing. Leaving little time or motivation for consumers to engage, appreciate and articulate oneself through fashion. This activity is destroying the value of clothing both figuratively and literally and is having a huge negative impact on people and planet. This research asks can designers create systems and services that improve and extend the use phase of the person–product relationship and ensure ongoing contentment and fulfilment for the user? The practice-led research projects, Wardrobe Hack and Uncatwalk, encourage everyday user autonomy of clothing from the site of their fashion experience, their own wardrobe. The aim of these projects is to enable the development of alternate ecologies of practice or behaviour for fashion users in the use phase of a garment’s life in order to encourage more fulfilling relationships with clothing to address the environmental impact of overconsumption. This practice-based fashion research project and its associated design intervention occur during the ‘use’ phase of clothing. This is a means of encouraging more sustainable consumer activity through longer-term consideration and connectivity with existing clothing. This is an under-researched stage of the conventional person-product-service relationship, and can be a means of encouraging more sustainable consumer activity.. This is achieved by exploring the viability and potential of a Wardrobe Hack service or courses of actions that enable ‘wearers’ to share their everyday practices, build competencies and create a space for sustainable fashion product–services and practices to emerge. This research builds on Fletcher’s work in the Local Wisdom (2013) project, exploring the emerging field of enriching the fashion user experience in the post-production and post-retail environment. It seeks to create a better integration of clothing and material culture in our lives by proposing alternative roles for designers and consumer to design services for longevity of use practices. These models demonstrate how digital and social media can provide a vehicle for fashion designers to facilitate participatory experiences amongst fashion users. Future research requires a longitudinal study to evaluate the impact from the consumer’s perspective.

With growing drives towards greater sustainability within the retail sector and growing requirement to conform to existing and emerging legislation, companies from ostensibly disparate sectors face the common challenge of encouraging the reduced consumption of saleable products, while simultaneously maintaining financial prosperity. Initially focused on knowledge exchange between the energy and water utilities and fashion retailers, TRANSFER (Trading Approaches to Nurturing Sustainable consumption in Fashion and Energy Retail) is now working together with a diverse group of large and SME (small- and medium-sized enterprises) retailers from a number of sectors, with the aim of successfully addressing this paradox. Combining the experiences of our commercial partners with academic expertise from a team of psychologists, fashion and management experts from the University of Sheffield and University of the Arts, London, TRANSFER is also investigating how efforts to promote sustainable consumption within retail are received and responded to by consumers. In fulfilling the project aims we hope to foster a more complete understanding of how retail sector initiatives can be successfully designed and implemented in order to have a positive impact on both retailers and their customers. This article provides a summary of the TRANSFER ‘Making it Real’ installation, held at Trinity Leeds shopping centre, (February 2015). This innovative, interactive exhibition was conceived of and developed upon the basis of discussions held with TRANSFER partners at a commercial partner workshop held in April 2014. TRANSFER is a knowledge exchange project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Retail Sector Initiative 2013 (ES/L005204/1).

The Swat Valley Guild (SVG) is engaging local artisans in the Swat Valley region of Northern Pakistan with the global fashion community. The local artisan heritage is centuries old and is under threat from conflict, climate change and industrialization. The SVG is organizing a demand-centric approach, which allows the artisans to engage with the global community and ensures it solves some key challenges of the fashion industry as well, focusing on waste, sustainability and people development. There is a unique form of embroidery (Panjara) indigenous to the Swat Valley being preserved by this project. Artisans from the Guild are changing the face of the fashion industry. The local artisan ecosystems allow for flexible bespoke production, enabling the fashion industry to solve some of its key challenges. These being waste, pollution and people insensitivity. Fashion as a discipline helps the individual to find him/herself through self-expression. It supports new and original form, which in time finds its function. When the founders of the SVG first decided to set up the Guild in 2016 in the Swat Valley Region, Northern Pakistan, they had to decide how to position this high social impact business in the open market to support the fashion industry with its key challenges. They felt the openness, innovativeness and the global presence of the fashion industry would be the best place to start.

Prominent fashion educators, namely Lidewij Edelkoort and Jose Teunissen, have time and again pointed towards the crisis of a fast-fashion system marked by the rapid and excessive production–consumption patterns that manifest a throwaway society within the vast cultural wastelands. As Edelkoort has pointed out in her manifesto ‘Anti_Fashion’ (2015), it may sound quite ironic but we still educate our young people to become catwalk designers and unique individuals. However, our society demands exchange, new economy and working together in teams as well as groups. Pedagogy, in this precise sense apropos to the fast-fashion system, is indeed based upon a flat ontological ground or singular identity, which resembles a vast agricultural field protected by the scarecrow in order to harvest only a particular type of crop. What is required is a type of wilderness – an ecosystem; an interdependent as well as symbiotic relationship among the heterogeneous groups of individuals to realize life’s capacity to flourish and maximize its true potential. Here, the question is this: in what ways does fashion education play an active role in inculcating the values of cooperative, collaborative, correlative and collective modes of production–consumption within contemporary fashion system(s)? This article argues that the Gandhian model has great potential in articulating possibilities that are quite timely and crucial in relation to the present discourse on fashion system(s). The Gandhian model encompasses Mahatma Gandhi’s idea of ecology, work, crafts, education and fashion. The article suggests that the Gandhian model is subversive in nature and does inculcate the values of cooperative, collaborative, correlative and collective modes of production–consumption whilst facilitating a spirit of activism in order to imagine fashion outside the purview of industrial and post-industrial capitalism. Here, the dialectics of the life (praxis) versus mechanization (techne) appear to be an obvious trap, which the article avoids by developing a kind of dialogical framework – a relationship to the environment quite radically different than that of humanism and anthropocentrism.

With production moving offshore in the race to the bottom, necessary to satisfy increased demand for more garments and faster trends delivered at lower prices, fashion in the developed world has become not just fast, but disposable. One of the ‘successes’ of the twentieth-century fashion industry was to democratize fashion; by adopting mass production techniques and sourcing from low-wage economies, fashion retailers were able to produce runway looks at more affordable prices. Concurrently, developments in fashion media sped up the communication of fashion and we have seen an exponential proliferation of enticing creative imagery circulating from brands, models, online influencers and passionate amateurs. Consequently, rates of fashion consumption have risen, unacceptable working conditions continue for many, and the fashion industry is facing complex and demanding challenges including resources, climate change, waste, labour conditions and income inequality. Much as we now understand how garment design has an exponential impact on a garment’s sustainability, and recognize that incorporating sustainable design principles is paramount, so those of us in fashion education should prioritize sustainability in our curriculum design and increasingly, I have felt a responsibility to bring these issues into the classroom, to design a fashion education that acknowledges and addresses ethical and sustainable aspects of fashion.

I made a conscious decision when starting my MA in creative pattern cutting to work in half-scale. Initially, I just wanted freedom to explore a wide variety of techniques quickly, effectively and without spending a fortune on fabrics that, in all probability, would just be disposed of afterwards. But, through my journey, I discovered so much more to this way of working.

These days, purchasing almost anything can be a veritable minefield: are these carrots organic? Is my eyeliner cruelty free? Can I afford to pay a little extra for a plant-based washing up liquid? The struggle is more than real – it is necessary. It shows that we are engaging with the all-too real problem of global warming, rather than burying our heads in the sand. For this reason, it is important we keep the environment in mind when we are making everyday choices, such as in our clothing. Whether you are a consumer, designer or manufacturer, it is important to include waste reduction in the goals of your efforts in the fashion industry. In this article, I will be sharing my views on why you should make the switch from mainstream to sustainable fashion and telling you a little bit about our brand, Madia & Matilda.

We have all been there: we put on an outfit, one we wore the previous week or previous day, and it just does not feel right. You look in the mirror and it does not work, the computer inside your head screams out: ‘YOUR IDENTITY HAS BEEN COMPROMISED’. As silly as this may seem, it is a familiar – and well-documented – story; we dress ourselves to reflect how we want to be perceived (Woodward 2007) and to reflect our identity. This might change on a daily basis: we might be cool and casual on a Monday and sharp as a point on Tuesday, but research shows wearing something that does not reflect how you feel can actually have a negative impact on your sense of well-being.