What Are We Trying to Sustain?

Sustainability has become a buzzword. It’s been on the tip of everyones tongue for a while now and while it’s great that the industry wants to talk about sustainability, it’s also become problematic. Sustainability, as a term, is used and exploited by some of the most unsustainable figures in the fashion system, with sustainability jargon and greenwashing going hand-in-hand.  Often those we elevate as doing the most in sustainability are still capable of obscuring the truth. So it is near impossible to place your trust in the words of the fashion industry when greenwashing is seeping into every nook and cranny of the sustainability conversation. This, combined with how sustainability is dominated by Western solutionism, makes sustainable fashion conversations complicated.

The sustainable fashion narrative presents us with the idea that there are simple fixes to a very simple problem, like swapping our fast fashion purchases for a ‘conscious’ collection. But there will never be a simple fix to a problem that has been allowed to thrive on a foundation of exploitation, colonialism, and destruction. These solutions and sustainable practices often benefit the West whilst exacerbating the situation for communities in the Global South, because these conversations exclude these voices in decision-making and fail to represent their stories. The sustainable fashion focus is too narrow, choosing to focus on a capitalistic and materialistic ‘solution’ that ignores the root causes of fashion’s exploitative and unethical practices. Truthfully this ‘solution’ encourages us to do the one thing that we need to stop doing. Consume.  

Conversations around ethical fashion often start with ‘I can’t afford to buy sustainably’ as if the only way forward is to buy more expensive, ethically made clothing. This is a trap I have fallen into myself once or twice. When I began learning more about the horrors of our fashion system I quit fast fashion, naive to the fact that quitting fast fashion wasn’t the only thing I needed to do. I also needed to stop consuming so much from ethical brands and second-hand clothing because all consumption is harmful if it's in excess - not just fast fashion. Perhaps the reason we jump to consumption as the answer is because the fashion industry has only ever cemented us as consumers and the nature of capitalistic society has made us feel unsatisfied and inadequate if we aren’t constantly consuming more new things. Maybe we don’t know how to detach ourselves from this role because it is a role we have always naturally fallen into. With eco-capitalism trending, sustainability is presented to us as a practice we buy into, so it’s no surprise our first response is to think we can consume ‘better’. But we can’t consume our way out of the problem. 

While we can swap our fast fashion purchases for slow, artisanally made pieces, if we are consuming at the same rate, the system remains unchanged. Consumption means pressure on supply chains, whether it be a fast fashion supply chain or a female cooperative of weavers. If we want to see a fashion system that empowers people and respects planetary boundaries, we must stop consuming at such a high rate. As Alec Leach, points out in his manifesto ‘The World is on Fire But We’re Still Buying Shoes’, we “mistake shopping for fulfilment” so as soon as one new purchase doesn’t fill a void, we go searching for more. But to make the fashion system more sustainable, we need to dismantle the capitalistic foundations that it has been built upon. Since the rise of fast fashion in the 1990s, the fashion system has been about exponential growth and profit over people and the planet. The shift needs to be to prioritising people and the planet over profits and this can’t be achieved with more consumption. 

While it is great that we are all talking about sustainability in the fashion industry, we need to be doing more and when I say we, I mean you and I, as consumers, but also fashion designers,  fashion brands, corporations and governments. We are all part of this system. As consumers we need to recognise the role we play in this system and seek to change our detached relationship with clothing, as well as be more conscious of the impact of our consumerism. There also needs to be a shift in perspective, to value ourselves as more than just consumers, because we are so much more than what consumer culture has reduced us to. Through collective activism we have the power to instigate change.

Fundamentally we need to stop focusing efforts on sustaining a system that is fundamentally flawed, inflicting harm at every stage of its value chain, and this is directed at those with the decision-making powers. The linear fashion system has been built on complex structures that need to be dismantled. A sustainable fashion system - if this is even possible - needs to stop focusing on growth above everything else and understand the root causes of the oppressive nature of fashion. Sustainability also needs better representation and inclusivity because it still comes from a Western top-down approach that does not understand the specific contexts and needs of the rest of the world - who, in many cases, have lived far more sustainably, for centuries, than any Western region. The fashion industry has always lacked diversity and silenced the voices of many groups around the world and sustainable fashion is not an exception to this. Sustainable fashion initiatives still exclude diverse voices and by promoting ethical consumption as the answer, it is these diverse voices who will be forced to bear the burden. The state of our fashion industry will not change if sustainable fashion initiatives focus on the same systems of oppression that the linear fashion system was built upon.