Brands want you to think they’re into Pride

It’s that time of year again when so many brands want to be your gay best friend. In fashion media, that means queer journalists’ inboxes get filled with press releases for seasonal Pride collections. One glance over my inbox and you’ll see phrases like “celebrating the LGBTQ+ community,” “living out and proud,” and “expressing your authentic self” among the press announcements for everything from tank tops to tube socks—all available with rainbows for a limited time only.

So ubiquitous are fashion brands’ multicolour collections that they’re now an annual staple on the marketing calendar. In a few cases, these initiatives are made in close collaboration with LGBTQ+ creatives and donate all the profits to LGBTQ+ causes—but those kinds of collections are in the minority. More often, it seems brands pop up every spring with their announcements of new products, with vague platitudes to self-love and unevidenced claims to support the community.

This can make Pride feel like merely another seasonal event for brands to push products or earn some positive PR—a feeling that’s spawned TikTok memes and become widely reported on in the press in the past two decades.

What’s accelerated in the last fews years is the churn of cheap fast fashion Pride collections. At surface level, that might come off as merely opportunistic and insensitive—enabling brands to capitalise off of a community they do relatively little to support during the rest of the year. But frequently, the harm runs much deeper, with a dark side brands hope you won’t see.

From SHEIN’s hundreds of polyester Pride looks to Boohoo telling us “Pride isn’t just a party”, brands with alarming human rights and environmental track records are increasingly trying to profit off of an event that started with a riot against police brutality and has continued annually with demonstrations against oppression. That’s what we call pinkwashing, and fast fashion seems to see the benefits.

What’s the harm if a few extra cheap t-shirts spread a message of love, you might wonder? I’ve taken a deep dive into the Good On You ratings for a number of brands that have launched Pride collections. What I’ve found won’t be shocking to many LGBTQ+ people, but it’s certainly disheartening: the positive brand image brands gain from Pride collections is often a cynical distraction from the far less inspiring impacts throughout their supply chains.

Rainbow capitalism and Pride collections

Any discussion of fashion’s history is inseparably linked with queerness. Many of the world’s largest fashion brands—from Christian Dior and Calvin Klein to Yves Saint Laurent and Alexander McQueen—are named after the gay men who founded them. And non-queer designers have co-opted and appropriated LGBTQ+ subcultures and nightlife for catwalk looks and mainstream trends for decades.

For many queer and trans people, our clothes have long been ways of affirming our identities and countering cis-heteronormativity. Clothing ourselves is, after all, a way of non-verbally communicating to the world around us. Long before there were hookup apps, for example, there were handkerchiefs, which some queer men used to flag what they’re looking for in a partner. And even as Pride events have become more party-like, they remain a space for gender exploration and subversion.

Style is clearly a central part to the diverse expressions of Pride around the world. But there’s a reason that queer people take to social media each year to call out giant brands engaging in so-called “rainbow capitalism”—ie the Pride collections feel like a cash grab.

Pride collections have become a turnkey way for brands to position themselves as inclusive and diverse. With studies finding as many as 20% of Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ+, it’s a profitable image for brands to portray. And so-called “rainbow retail” can be big business, with some analysts estimating that global LGBTQ+ spending could be higher than £3 trillion, according to Forbes.

For some of TikTok’s most popular brands such as SHEIN and Boohoo, the only thing the queer community gets is more inane slogan t-shirts.

Labels ranging from fast fashion giants like Forever 21 and H&M jump on the bandwagon each year. Even luxury houses like Gucci have come out with product launches like the £640 rainbow sneakers they dropped back in 2017. And step into almost any major department store between May and July and you’re certain to be greeted with racks of “love is love” graphic t-shirts. (That is until there’s any slight sign of backlash. This year, for example, Target retreated on LGBTQ+ support and pulled some of its Pride collection from stores after a vocal far-right minority of consumers threatened boycotts.)

Sometimes, there is monetary support for the queer causes wrapped up in these campaigns. In 2021, for example, Abercrombie & Fitch donated more than £150,000 to crisis support nonprofit The Trevor Project. And for its 2022 collection, Dr. Martens’ pledged more than £200,000 to LGBTQ+ charities like ​​the UK’s Albert Kennedy Trust, which helps homeless LGBTQ+ young people across Britain. Despite marketers going after the “pink dollar”, LGBTQ+ people continue to face higher rates of poverty as well as suicide, so these charities clearly do crucial work.

But with imprecise and vague statements, it’s challenging to determine exactly how these collections benefit queer communities. What percentage of profits from Pride merchandise actually goes to queer causes can remain a mystery, as brands are not often fully transparent. For example, when H&M announced its 2021 “Beyond the Rainbow” campaign, the company committed to donating more than £70,000 to the United Nations Free & Equal Campaign. Yet the press release was not clear on how much the company—which had 2021 profits of nearly £1.5 billion—would profit off of Pride-themed merchandise. And in prior years, H&M had donated a mere 10% of proceeds from its Pride collections, Vox reported in 2018.

For some of TikTok’s most popular brands such as SHEIN and Boohoo, the only thing the queer community gets is more inane slogan t-shirts—I found no trace of a penny going to LGBTQ+ creatives or charities.

What is ‘pinkwashing’? The opposite of empowerment

It can seem that the world’s most profitable brands only focus on LGBTQ+ people when Pride Month rolls around. After the collections end in July, you’ll not hear a peep for about 11 months. That’s what’s termed “rainbow washing” and “pinkwashing”.

On one level, pinkwashing happens when corporations aim to benefit from profit or positive press coverage because of LGBTQ+ initiatives that are inconsistent and centred around Pride festivities. But pinkwashing applies to more than merely shallow advertising campaigns. It often serves to distract from a brand’s more problematic business activities like not paying living wages. When you look closer, this is when Pride collections can seem more than a bit hypocritical.

How do you tell if a fashion brand is “pinkwashing”? One of the telltale signs is when the brand’s support for LGBTQ+ people almost exclusively revolves around marketing campaigns targeting more affluent consumers in a handful of wealthy countries. It’s pinkwashing when these brands fail to demonstrate their support for LGBTQ+ people extends beyond the point of sale.

Fast fashion brands, for example, typically produce garments in countries where queer and trans people face social and legal discrimination. Are these brands advocating for the rights of queer and trans workers across their supply chains? Do they have policies in place to support their LGBTQ+ employees not only in the corporate office, but in their factories and in their suppliers’ factories? Do they lobby politicians in the countries they operate in to make anti-discrimination laws a legislative prioroty? They’d surely tell you if they were.

I reviewed the ratings for 20 fast fashion brands, which have had Pride collections out in the past year, and 0 were found to be paying a living wage.

Here are the facts on fast fashion brands’ Pride capsule collections: they’re produced by garment workers who are too often exploited, underpaid, and toiling in factories that research increasingly shows the depth of trauma faced by the majority women of colour who work these precarious jobs.

The Good On You brand ratings data I dug into highlights the pinkwashing: I reviewed the ratings for 20 fast fashion brands, which have had Pride collections out in the past year, and 0 were found to be paying a living wage. Using our ratings system, I conducted a simple analysis of brands—selecting a sample of fast fashion labels including SHEIN, Boohoo, H&M, Forever 21, and over a dozen more. As suspected, these brands earn our lowest scores for their impacts on people.

Despite what the advertising campaigns might suggest, queer liberation is not only an issue in a handful of wealthy countries. LGBTQ+ people face violence, discrimination, and poverty around the world, including in many countries where Pride collections are produced. Ask yourself: how many garment workers are harmed to make a cheap rainbow t-shirt? A lot. How many of them are queer and trans, too? Likely a significant minority of the workforce, even in countries where it’s not safe to be openly out. And how many of the fast fashion brands that employ them are advocating for their human rights in the countries where these brands produce their clothes? Virtually none.

There’s nothing empowering about Pride clothing that’s produced by brands that are exploiting and underpaying their workers, certainly including LGBTQ+ people in the supply chain.

Follow the rainbow straight to the landfills

The most depressing and ironic Pride collection I’ve seen in recent years comes from SHEIN, the ultra fast fashion brand that has taken trend churn to astronomical new levels.

SHEIN is, of course, the brand that takes so much of what’s bad about fast fashion and speeds it up—adding thousands of new styles to its website on a daily basis, according to reporting from Business of Fashion. It’s a brand famous for using massive amounts of user data to predict microtrends, for sparking billions of #haul views on TikTok, and for overworking and underpaying garment workers. For example, a 2021 report from the NGO Public Eye revealed SHEIN’s workers putting in as many as 75 hours a week with one day off a month.

Analysing last year’s collections delivers some revealing numbers: In 2022, I clocked 392 Pride products on SHEIN’s website. That’s more than any other fast fashion brand’s Pride capsule collections. As a point of comparison, Forever 21—no friend to LGBTQ+ people—had only five styles in its 2022 Pride collection. In the process of writing this report, I refreshed my browser tab several times over the course of a few days and the number of pride items available on SHEIN ticked up each time.

Brands like SHEIN, H&M, Zara, Forever 21, and many others are largely responsible for driving the overproduction of clothing over the past few decades. This historically high consumption has pushed fashion’s waste crisis to new levels. “Around 85% of all textiles thrown away in the US—roughly 13 million tonnes in 2017—are either dumped into landfill or burned”, reported Abigail Beall for the BBC. Because these clothes aren’t dumped in the backyards of consumers in regions like North America and Europe means consumers in the Global North don’t experience firsthand the environmental catastrophe unfolding due to fast fashion waste—more often, it’s dumped in countries from Ghana to Chile.

SHEIN’s Pride collection amounts to hundreds of rainbow garments mostly made from virgin plastic, which can take centuries to decompose in landfills. When I browsed its hundreds of Pride styles, I came across items like its cami dress with a rainbow graphic reading simply “Pride”—retailing for a whopping £8.49. Dozens of other garments covered in rainbows retailed for less than a tenner. As with the cami dress, almost all of these garments are 95% polyester and 5% elastane. That means many of these Pride clothes are made out of petroleum, a non-renewable resource that’s the opposite of sustainable.

In this way, the production of these garments contributes directly to the climate crisis—an issue that’s intrinsically linked to LGBTQ+ justice. “I envision a world where everyone can have the freedom to be who they are,” upcycling designer MI Leggett told me in an interview about waste in fashion. “But that can’t really happen if we’re going to have a climate apocalypse.” Leggett bluntly noted the interconnectedness of these issues, saying that trans and queer liberation can’t happen “if we’re all on fire and don’t have any water to drink”.

Alternative idea: return to Pride’s radically creative roots

A friend recently texted me a screenshot of a product they saw on Amazon: “The first gay Pride was a riot” read the slogan on the £13.99 t-shirt. As ironic as it is, the shirt is correct. Bank of America wasn’t sponsoring the first Pride, and police weren’t marching, either. We celebrate Pride Month in June in commemoration of the Stonewall riots, in which New York City police officers raided an LGTBTQ+ bar and the fed-up patrons—led predominantly by queer and trans people of colour—fought back over four nights. That was 1969. The following year, a protest march marked the first Pride parade.

While this one event can sometimes seem over-mythologised in queer history, the point is clear: Pride was not founded as an opportunity for corporate sponsorship or a seasonal event to push products. It’s a deeply political protest to a world that perpetuates violence against trans and queer people.

“As with the Stonewall riots and the first Pride, the twin threats of violence and oppression toward the LGBTQ community underlined the ongoing necessity of Pride Month as a political act first, a party second”, wrote Alex Abad-Santos in 2018. And it’s equally true this year, when simply being queer remains illegal and even punishable by death in some countries; when US states are trying to criminalise trans children and banning drag; and when the UK’s media and political discourse remains deeply entrenched in transphobia. The consequences are real: almost half of LGBTQ+ youth have contemplated suicide.

I can’t think of a gayer way to celebrate Pride than rejecting oppressive systems that harm so many people in the process.

For many of these reasons, Reclaim Pride hosts New York City’s Queer Liberation March in protest of the corporatisation of Pride events.

Similarly, LGBTQ+ people and their allies can reject the fast fashion-ification of Pride by returning to its radical roots. As Andy Campbell highlights in his book Queer X Design, Pride traditions are deeply connected to grassroots creativity. The history of Pride is one of handmade posters and t-shirts, upcycling and repurposing, anti-capitalist design and alternative zines, and more.

Reignite that legacy. Avoiding that SHEIN rainbow dress won’t solve fashion’s problems—but it can give you extra cash to support queer people directly and inspiraiton to avoid buying anything new.

Instead, why not try:

• Support local LGBTQ+ artists, designers, and makers.
• Upcycle garments in your own closet.
• Host a Pride clothing swap.
• Rewear the Pride gear from parades past.
• Donate directly to organizations like The Trevor Project and ACLU’s Drag Defense Fund.
• Take cash to tip drag queens and artists at local Pride events and bars.
• Learn how to tie-dye your old white t-shirts.

Fast fashion goods may be cheap, but they also drain demand for your neighbourhood queer artists and upcyclers. Many queer creatives make a lot of their income during Pride festivities, so seek out these makers to support and celebrate. And even when fast fashion brands do pledge a percentage of profits to LGBTQ+ organisations, the much-needed funding will go further when you donate directly, without driving up corporate profits in the process.

After all, I can’t think of a gayer way to celebrate Pride than rejecting oppressive systems that harm so many people in the process.

The post From SHEIN to Boohoo, Fast Fashion Profiting off Pride Is Peak Pinkwashing appeared first on Good On You.

The most troubling story in fashion

Like many trends in the 2020s, the story of ultra fast fashion starts with TikTok. And it often goes something like this. A young woman poses in a bedroom, hugging a bunch of plastic bags. She raises an eyebrow, bites her lip, and then winks before the video quickly cuts to the next clip: her hands on a pair of scissors, opening the first of many packages.

Over the next 30 seconds, this video jumps between ripping bags open and modelling what’s inside—elf cosplay ears, butterfly printed socks, more plastic bags containing individually plastic-wrapped garments and accessories. It’s all set to Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space”. As Swift sings “you look like my next mistake”, the TikToker empties another package on her bed, covering her mouth in excitement.

There’s no use in individually calling out this TikToker or this video, which has racked up more than 700,000 likes. It’s nowhere near the most watched video of its kind. She’s simply reenacting the fashion haul meme, which has become massively popular with young social media users. Hauls first emerged on YouTube in the 2010s. But they’ve reached new levels of notoriety in the 2020s on TikTok among Gen Z shoppers. Videos tagged with #haul on TikTok have cumulatively been viewed more than 15 billion times as of writing, and that number increases every minute.

When you scroll through fashion hauls, you see countless examples of consumption on steroids. In one typical video that’s captioned “*accidentally* spent $480 at #SHEIN”, a TikToker unpacks big boxes and lays dozens of packaged garments out in her room, covering the floor. In another video captioned “Another haullll #princesspolly”, a different TikToker shows off dresses she purchased during Princess Polly’s Black Friday sale. “You’re not going to believe me when I tell you how much I paid for these,” she says as she holds her plastic-wrapped dresses, “’cause it’s insane—it was so cheap.”

Most consumers on TikTok seem to know little about ultra fast fashion’s dark side.

Considering the plunging prices for fast fashion over the past few decades, these garments are historically cheap in terms of both quality and price. They’re the products of a relatively recent mutation of fast fashion known as “ultra fast fashion”. If that sounds ultra bad, that’s because it is.

Ultra fast fashion ranks among the most troubling stories in fashion and tech today. But with all the cheerful displays of overconsumption, most consumers on TikTok seem to know little about ultra fast fashion’s dark side—how this newish wave of brands accelerates the industry’s environmental impacts, worsens garment workers’ already dismal job conditions, and stalks shoppers all over the web to predict what you’ll want to buy next.

Ultra fast fashion v fast fashion: what’s the difference?

What is ultra fast fashion? In the simplest sense, ultra fast fashion retailers take everything bad about fast fashion and speed it up. That means faster production cycles, faster trend churn, and faster to the landfills. The clothing is ultra plastic, with at least half of these garments made from virgin plastics that will shed microfibers into waterways and the air for years to come. Consequently, the negative impacts on workers and the environment reach depressingly new lows. And it’s only getting worse.

Using Good On You’s independent ratings, I surveyed the sustainability records for five of the most popular ultra fast fashion brands—SHEIN, Fashion Nova, Boohoo, PrettyLittleThing, and Cider. What I found is both distressing and unsurprising: all of these brands receive Good On You’s lowest score, “We Avoid”, for their records on key social and environmental issues.

The industry’s widespread exploitation of garment workers constitutes, in the words of Business of Fashion contributor Bandana Tewari, “modern-day colonialism”. And ultra fast fashion brands appear to be taking the industry’s deplorable record to new lows.

For their track records on labour, in particular, these brands again receive the lowest marks. We’ve found zero evidence that any of these brands pay living wages—100% of these brands fail to disclose any meaningful information about forced labour and the wellbeing of the workforce. And watchdog groups have found that the situation is dire. With SHEIN’s suppliers, for example, a late 2021 report from NGO Public Eye revealed that workers were putting in 75 hour weeks, receiving only one day off per month, and pay per item of clothing—all in gross violations of labour laws.

100% of these brands fail to disclose any meaningful information about forced labour and the wellbeing of the workforce.

“If fast fashion for the past few decades has been characterised by low prices, high volume, and relentless pace, then the new wave of ultra fast fashion brands are pushing those three criteria to their absolute extreme—and pushing millions of already impoverished garment makers to the breaking point”, says journalist Lauren Bravo, author of the essential handbook “How To Break Up With Fast Fashion”.

For many millennials, fast fashion conjures early 2000s memories of trips to the shopping centre to check out the latest styles at well-known stores like H&M, Zara, American Apparel, Forever 21, and Abercrombie & Fitch—a handful of the many multinational brands that get grouped under the fast fashion umbrella. Fast fashion ushered in an unprecedented era where trends seen on the runway could pop up on racks at your local mall in a few weeks’ time. Where once fashion revolved around a couple of seasonal collections per year, these trend-focused retailers essentially changed that to 52 “seasons”, with their collections seeming to change each time you’d stop by.

Ultra fast fashion turns fast fashion’s “weeks” into days and “dozens of styles” into hundreds and thousands. The numbers alone sound sinister. Brands like SHEIN and Boohoo are reportedly posting thousands of new styles to their websites on a daily basis. Sometimes, knockoffs of trending celebrity and pop culture styles will appear online in as little as 24 hours, as so happened with a knockoff of a vintage Thierry Mugler dress Kim Kardashian wore. It’s e-commerce that seems to happen in real time.

“We’ve reached the point where clothing is now essentially being sold as a ‘Fast Moving Consumer Good’, in the same category as snack foods, fizzy drinks, toothpaste—as something entirely disposable, to be consumed once and then thrown away,” Bravo tells me. “Except, of course, with fashion there is no ‘away’. Those synthetic clothes will be weighing down the planet for a century or more.” That’s only where the bad news begins.

The big, bad brands taking over your feed

Influencer culture is now deeply embedded into the supply chain. The leader in TikTok’s haul of shame is indisputably SHEIN. My analysis into the brands that get the most #haul views on TikTok found that SHEIN’s number into the billions, with similar brands trailing in the hundreds of millions. (Conducting similar research, a UK-based brand agency found in June 2021 that SHEIN far outshone its competitors in TikTok exposure.) Clocking in at hundreds of millions of views, brands like PrettyLittleThing and Boohoo—both owned by the UK-based Boohoo Group—are also household names on TikTok.

These brands’ popularity on social media represents the pinnacle of shopping as entertainment—with poor quality garments produced as if they were only intended to last for a TikTok moment.

People are no longer shopping for clothes—they’re shopping for content.

Lauren Bravo

 

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Une publication partagée par Venetia La Manna (@venetialamanna)

“People are no longer shopping for clothes—they’re shopping for content,” says Bravo. “It’s no coincidence that ultra fast fashion has grown alongside social media and influencer culture. Together, those industries have shifted perceptions of clothes as tactile, tangible real-world items to products that primarily just need to look good in a TikTok or Instagram photo.”

Ultra fast fashion retailers have no brick and mortar stores. They keep their operations entirely online, where their overhead costs are low and impulse purchases are instantaneous. And unlike the traditional fashion marketing mix, ultra fast fashion focuses its efforts overwhelmingly on TikTok, where they work with a vast network of teenage and early twenty-something shopping influencers. Demographically, white Gen Z women in Europe and North America produce the most viewed videos, but the brands have a global, multilingual reach.

And similar to how fast fashion grew during the cash-crunched Great Recession, ultra fast fashion brands have seen exponential growth through the pandemic, as locked down young people have been spending record amounts of time in front of digital screens—swiping through videos and quickly purchasing many of the trendy garments they see.

Disposable culture is now the norm

Hauls are one of the dominant fashion memes today. And that plays a key role in redefining our relationships with clothing. “A lot of fashion content on TikTok is haul and consumption based, which makes it seem like fashion is all about shopping, when in reality, fashion is an artform that exists outside of shopping”, says Lily Fang, the creator who runs the popular @imperfectidealist TikTok account focused on sustainable fashion.

Certainly, anyone who spends some time engaging with fashion content on TikTok could easily get a distorted sense that ultra fast fashion is the beginning and end of fashion. And that perspective seems to be shaping a generation of content creators. The target audience for sponsored “hauls”—where prominent TikTokers often receive free products and some level of compensation to post about their fashion binges—is overwhelmingly young women.

It's hugely wasteful. We're already seeing it with SHEIN taking over thrift stores.

Lily Fang

Ultra fast fashion’s aesthetic focus on popular celebrities only adds to the overconsumption itch. Where fast fashion has often drawn influence from high fashion’s runways, ultra fast fashion brands look to social media’s most popular figures. In 2021, SHEIN tapped Khloé Kardashian and a panel of celebrities as judges for a design competition. Kourtney Kardashian has collaborated with PrettyLittleThing for a collection. And Cardi B launched her first clothing line with Fashion Nova, even rapping in her track “She Bad” that she “could buy designer, but this Fashion Nova fit all that ass”.

“These brands push people to constantly buy—and buy in huge quantities,” Fang explains. “And since they rely on microtrends, it’s hugely wasteful because people will wear something just a couple times before getting rid of it. We’re already seeing it with SHEIN taking over thrift stores.”

A generation now views ultra fast fashion’s historically low price points and disposable culture as the norm, with many young people considering garments worn out after only a few washes. This overproduction and quick disposal has exacerbated fashion’s waste crisis. While verifiable stats about fashion’s impact are hard to track down, at least one study has suggested that for every five garments produced, three end up in landfills or incinerators.

“Ultra fast fashion’s relentless churn makes it almost impossible to consider a purchase before you commit,” Bravo says. “Instead, you take the risk and buy—because when it’s only the price of a sandwich, what do you have to lose?”

@imperfectidealist Reply to @abacus28 as you might suspect, SHEIN is not an ethical or sustainable brand #fastfashionchange #greenwashing #ethicalfashion #greenscreen ♬ original sound – Lily – sustainable fashion

‘Surveillance capitalism’—tracking your every click

Have you ever had a dress put a curse on you and follow your every move? Without giving the plot away, that’s the concept behind the film “In Fabric”, in which a haunted red dress torments an unlucky shopper. That horror comedy seems like quite an apt metaphor for the Orwellian way ultra fast fashion brands capture your data with every click, monitor your every interaction across digital channels, and creepily project pictures of your previously viewed items on almost any website you visit.

Fast fashion brands like Forever 21 and H&M are known for cringey digital marketing tactics, with a barrage of ads and emails that put pressure on you to click and buy ASAP. Ultra fast fashion brands do that, too—but with far more, and far more precise, data.

Companies like SHEIN and Boohoo have built their entire business on harnessing user data to predict what styles will sell next—and sell fast. This has led to considerable growth. SHEIN, for instance, surpassed both H&M and Zara in US sales in 2021.

This commercial success is based, in large part, on TikTok’s infamous artificial intelligence. Every time you view, like, or comment on #haul content, TikTok’s algorithms get better at serving you similar kinds of content you’ll find entertaining. Its algorithm so successfully predicts what you’ll be interested in watching that a headline in The New York Times declared “TikTok reads your mind”. “The algorithm tries to get people addicted”, Guillaume Chaslot, founder of Algo Transparency, told The Times. Chaslot said that each video users watch gives TikTok more information about them, and “in a few hours” the algorithm can detect things like musical taste, interest in drugs, whether they’re depressed, and more potentially sensitive assumptions.

Algorithmic oppression is not just a glitch in the system but, rather, is fundamental to the operating system of the web.

Safiya Umoja Noble

Many analysts believe such algorithms can cause social harm. Increasingly, organisations like the Algorithmic Justice League and scholars such as Safiya Umoja Noble highlight, in the words of Noble, how “algorithmic oppression is not just a glitch in the system but, rather, is fundamental to the operating system of the web”. Similarly, Netflix’s hit documentary “The Social Dilemma” outlined the impacts that platforms like Instagram and TikTok have to manipulate our lives and shape opinions. In 2021, for example, a leaked Facebook report showed that the company was aware that Instagram had negative influences on teenage girls’ body image.

Ultra fast fashion piggybacks on the negative side effects of these algorithmic systems—gathering data from content shared on these platforms and pairing that with the data they glean from their own customers. Many describe this system of stalking users for commercial advantage as ”surveillance capitalism”, a term coined by Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff.

By surveilling your digital life, brands gain access to a vast web of data that allows them to make increasingly more accurate predictions about what will trend next, often with frightening accuracy.

“It feels as though these brands put far more effort into developing the algorithms that stalk us, study us, and then chase us around the internet with targeted ads, than they do into designing great clothes”, Bravo tells me.

Breaking an ultra fast fashion addiction

In taking over our TikTok feeds, these brands have an extraordinary power not only to increase the pace of churning trends but also to manipulate young peoples’ mental health.

“Fast fashion addictions are often the result of an insecurity,” Fang tells me. “This could be an insecurity stemming from not having enough—pushed by the constant ads—or not fitting in. This isn’t as simple to resolve, but removing yourself from situations that make you feel like you don’t have enough or aren’t enough is a good place to start.”

Fast fashion addictions are often the result of an insecurity.

Lily Fang

Deleting the apps, unfollowing influencers who partake in the #haul culture, and unsubscribing from brands’ marketing emails are a few places Fang says you can start breaking ultra fast fashion’s microtrend obsession. “You can replace that with more supportive content and slow fashion creators who focus on styling, practical tips, etc instead of shopping,” she suggests. Recently, she’s been discovering the joys of getting clothes tailored.

Ultimately, brands are responsible for their massive exploitation of garment workers—creating massive profits for only a handful of billionaires and environmental harm to the planet. But added together, people still have significant power to hold these companies accountable as consumers and push for legislation as citizens. On the regulatory front, the Fashion Sustainability and Social Accountability Act under consideration in New York state is one promising step in this direction.

And in advocating for change, ultra fast fashion addicts will come to rethink not only the ethics of overconsumption but their own personal style.

“If people think they need to constantly shop and participate in trends to be fashionable, I’d argue that they don’t actually have a good sense of their personal style,” Fang says. “Learning to slow down actually encourages you to get more creative.” And in a world where the hustle of microtrends dominate, slowing down is, in its own way, radical.

The post What is Ultra Fast Fashion? Investigating Why It’s Ultra Bad appeared first on Good On You.

Meet Mikaela Loach, climate justice activist

Activist Mikaela Loach broke up with fast fashion several years ago. Since first learning about the industry’s harms by watching “The True Cost” documentary, she’s earned a reputation for speaking out about the big brands’ lack of urgency to address their impacts on people and planet. But that’s only where her activism begins.

A medical student based in Edinburgh, Scotland, Loach is one of the most prolific young voices in the broader fight for climate justice. She’s locked herself in an arm tube in front of the UK’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in a headline-grabbing protest against oil and gas subsidies. She’s built a community of more than 100,000 people across social media, where she aims to make getting into activism more accessible. And most recently, she’s one of three claimants taking the British government to court over fossil fuel extraction in the North Sea.

Her goal: highlight where the climate emergency intersects with white supremacy, colonialism, and labour rights. “‘I’m going to tell you why ‘we’ did not cause the climate crisis,” says Loach on one of her recent Instagram videos. “When just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of industrial greenhouse gas emissions since 1988, and the world’s richest 1% of the population produces more than double the emissions of the poorest half of the world, ‘we’ did not cause the climate crisis. Systems caused it. Capitalism caused it. White supremacy caused it.” That more or less sums up her philosophy.

As world leaders gathered in Glasgow, Scotland, for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, we spoke to Loach about how to get involved in the climate justice movement; her own journey into direct action, and the scoop on her new docuseries, “ReDress the Future”.

9 Q&As on direct action and fast fashion

1. Q: You certainly have not let the pandemic slow you down. You’ve released dozens of episodes of your podcast, launched a docuseries on streaming service WaterBear (dubbed the “Netflix for climate documentaries” by British Vogue), and recently became a claimant on a lawsuit against the UK government. Can you tell us a little more about why you’re taking the government to court?

A: For a few years, I’ve participated in direct action around the huge amounts of subsidies the UK government gives to the oil and gas industry. In October 2019, I joined activists from Scotland in blocking the entrance roads outside of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Our site was called “Power In Truth,” and it was all focused on these subsidies—telling the government they shouldn’t be in bed with the fossil fuel industry. I chained myself to an arm tube and put myself at risk of arrest. It was very stressful and scary. It very much felt like a last resort activity.

But obviously, it’s almost two years later and those subsidies are still being paid. Nothing really seems to be changing. I heard about this court case, reached out and asked how I could be involved. There are two other claimants on the Paid to Pollute case: Kairin van Sweeden who lives in Aberdeen and Jeremy Cox, a former oil worker. The case is about the subsidies, which have given billions of pounds of public money to fossil fuel companies and make the North Sea the most profitable place to extract oil and gas. This does not line up with the government’s commitments to reach “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050. This does not mean extracting as much as possible before 2050. We need to be decreasing emissions now, and that means no new oil and gas extractions.

We’ll be going to court on the 8th of December. It feels kind of weird and scary in many ways. I don’t take it lightly. Taking the government to court is a very serious thing. But I think all of us are desperate. We’re tired of the fact that these companies are not only getting away with this, but paid to do it.

2. Q: You’re a really inspiring role model to many young climate activists, but I’d like to wind the clock back a bit and hear about where your journey began: What were your first steps into advocacy and direct action?

A: It was a bit of a roundabout journey. I was born in Jamaica, but I grew up in the UK in very majority white spaces. I was aware of racism, difference, and white supremacy from quite a young age. My parents brought us up watching documentaries about the Maroons—Jamaica’s freedom fighters—and about the civil rights movements in the UK and the US. That taught me about how change has happened over time through movements of people.

As I got a bit older, I got involved with migrant rights. This was my first experience organising with groups supporting refugees. I was also becoming increasingly concerned about the climate. I think a lot of young people are worried about this huge crisis that’s happening that we feel we didn’t cause in the same way as prior generations. We’re told that we should change our lifestyle—boycotting fast fashion, eating vegan, walking everywhere, taking public transport, and all these individual choices.

Eventually, my organising experiences led me to climate justice. I realised that my work in refugee rights and anti-racism was inherently connected to the climate. And through the lens of climate justice, that meant organising, movement building, and collective action for justice. That’s when I really got into direct action with groups like Extinction Rebellion and Climate Camp Scotland.

3. Q: Climate justice is a term some activists worry has lost a bit of its potency as it’s been misappropriated by people in power. What does it mean to you? 

A: Climate justice means that we can not only tackle climate collapse, but we can also create a better world for all of us that tackles white supremacy at the core, that tackles all these interconnected injustices at their core. A lot of us feel like we’re in last resort territory, and we need to take drastic action on these issues.

Climate justice means that we can not only tackle climate collapse, but we can also create a better world for all of us that tackles white supremacy at the core, that tackles all these interconnected injustices at their core.

4. Q: Let’s talk about the connection with fashion. On “The YIKES Podcast” and in your writing, you’ve talked about the many negative impacts of fast fashion. How has your personal relationship with clothes evolved over the past few years?

A: I started boycotting fast fashion and learning a lot more about the industry and the harm it’s caused after watching “The True Cost” documentary. That was hugely transformative for me, as I believe it’s been for a lot of people. There’s a line in it that Orsola de Castro says: “Clothes are our chosen skin.” It reminded me of a proverb in the Bible: “She is clothed with strength and dignity.”

I started wondering, am I clothing myself in strength and dignity if the clothes I’m wearing have harmed the people who are making them, if they’ve exploited the majority of women of colour all over the world who make them? Am I being clothed in dignity or am I being clothed in the oppression of other people in order to make myself feel empowered?

That was a big realisation of how connected the fashion industry is to systems of colonialism and white supremacy, and how we are allowing that in the way that we continue to prop up these industries. It really got me to care more about fashion. It actually made me kind of more excited about the clothes that I’m wearing, because if I know that they come from a place of respect and of goodness and of real empowerment, then I feel more excited about them.

5. Q: “The True Cost” is an excellent place to start. What else is on your beginner’s guide to advocacy list?

A: After “The True Cost,” which is a really motivating rallying call, I’d check out a great podcast called “Remember Who Made Them” by Venetia La Manna and a couple other really incredible fashion experts. The whole podcast was started to fund and give reparations to garment workers who have lost out on payments through the pandemic.

If you go on Fashion Revolution’s website, they’ve got tons of blogs that are about all of these different issues and explain them really well.

6. Q: We, obviously, have to include “ReDress the Future,” your new free to stream docuseries. What’s the gist?

A: Of course, of course [laughs]. “ReDress the Future” is a great next step for people who’ve engaged with these issues before. Maybe they’ve watched “The True Cost” and know a bit more about these things. We’re more talking about solutions rather than the problem.

Looking at sustainable fashion and the lifestyle changes we can make for the planet, what that means is that we need to move from “sustainable for me” to “sustainable for we”.

7. Q: Thinking about solutions, the debates around sustainability too often focus on this false dichotomy between individual choices and systems change. You’ve spoken about the need for both. How do you think about that tension within your advocacy work?

A: I think the problem in the debate is that there’s too much of a focus placed on individual action disconnected from collective change. Obviously, individual actions are a part of the collective system change. But I was on a panel with Bill McKibben recently and one thing he says really illustrates this point. He says that we need individuals to be less of an individual and more of a collective. If the actions you’re taking as an individual are helping to build something better for the collective, then that’s really helpful.

8. Q: That’s a really important point in sustainable and conscious fashion. How do you link that idea to a space that sometimes feels exclusionary to a lot of people?

A: Looking at sustainable fashion and the lifestyle changes we can make for the planet, what that means is that we need to move from “sustainable for me” to “sustainable for we”. If you can go “zero waste” yourself because you have more time privilege or financial privilege, but there are people in your local area who can’t make those same choices because of those reasons, then maybe think about how you can make this action more accessible for your community. Ask, how can we do this together? Because actions aren’t truly sustainable unless as many people as possible can participate in them. That’s where we can go beyond activities that can be ego-fueling and actually do good for the collective.

9. Q: The climate emergency can feel really overwhelming. A lot of people might wonder where they can get started in working toward the collective good. Do you have any tips for how someone can figure out where their skills and talents can make a difference?

A: This is something I hear a lot, so we did a whole episode on “The YIKES Podcast” focused on the different roles in movements. I’d recommend that folks listen to that to get started.

I’ll emphasise that I’m not motivated by despair. I don’t think any of us are sustainably motivated by despair. In order to work out what you should be doing, you need to find that spot that not only makes your heart shatter and break but also makes your heart want to beat out of your chest because you’re so excited by the idea of changing that thing. For me, that’s what climate justice is. It’s not actually just about the heart-shattering stuff. I’m motivated by overturning the systems that have caused harm for so long and refusing to allow them to persist.

I think that everyone needs to fight for what makes you so excited that you can’t not do it. Sometimes people will be like, oh it’s so brave what you’re doing. And like, it’s actually not. I just simply cannot not be doing this. And we need everyone to be at that place.

Author bio: 

JD Shadel is a London-based journalist, editor, and strategist, whose writing appears in The Washington Post, Condé Nast’s them., VICE, BBC News, Bloomberg, and many other outlets. Their work often centres on issues of justice and the experiences of LGBTQ+ people. In 2017, VICE editors named their reporting on historical queer activism among the “Best Writing of 2017″, and they’ve played leading roles in projects and publications honoured by the U.S. Travel Association and the Webby Awards. At Good On You, JD serves as Head of Content, building on their decade of experience in community-driven digital media and a lifetime of second hand shopping. (Author photo by Celeste Noche.) Find them on Twitter and their website.

The post Q&A: Getting Into Climate Justice with Activist Mikaela Loach appeared first on Good On You.

Meet the Sustainable Fashion Forum’s founder

Sustainable fashion is nothing new. What’s new are the unsustainable practices that define the industry. Fast fashion has only emerged in the past few decades, with the likes of H&M and Zara driving down prices, exploiting workers, and contributing to the climate emergency. Many people now toss out barely-worn garments, and they’re shopping new looks daily on hyper-fast eCommerce platforms like SHEIN and Boohoo.

Brittany Sierra is pushing the industry to rethink that entire business model. The Portland, Oregon-based founder of the Sustainable Fashion Forum (SFF) is one of today’s most compelling disruptors—a marketing executive and entrepreneur from the Pacific Northwest who has quickly risen from relative obscurity to be on the forefront of the industry’s most urgent issues. On Instagram, the SFF community numbers into the hundreds of thousands. And with the annual SFF conference, she holds space for people changing the game—bringing together small- and -medium-sized brands, fashion insiders, and sustainability experts to collectively reimagine the status quo.

This season, Sierra has taken her mission one step further—launching the “Crash Course Fashion Podcast” to dive deep into the behind-the-scenes challenges sustainable businesses face. (One installment features Good On You’s Gordon Renouf.) As the first episodes of the podcast aired, we sat down with Sierra to get her take on the current state of sustainable fashion: how “sustainable” has become a marketing buzzword, how brands are failing to understand shoppers, and a much-needed pep talk for those discouraged by the slow pace of change.

7 Q&As with Brittany Sierra on the state of sustainable fashion

1. Q: You started the Sustainable Fashion Forum in 2017 because of a disconnect you saw in the industry—a disconnect between leading brands and shoppers. Has that motivation changed in the years since? 

A: I can’t say that anything has really changed. My motivation is still the same. And honestly, over the years, it’s been reinforced by the feedback from our community.

When I first started it, I wasn’t planning on creating a conference, a podcast, a platform. I thought I was simply merging my passions for business, fashion, and sustainability. But in the past few years, it’s become clear that the space we’ve created has become a crucial voice for both fashion enthusiasts as well as the many brands that we reach.

I started this because I saw a gap in the sustainability space. Even now, there still aren’t that many people asking the difficult questions and also bringing the business perspective on how brands must do better.

 

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2. Q: News hook: You’ve just launched a podcast, “Crash Course Fashion,” which goes behind the scenes to show us what it takes to run a sustainable fashion brand. What inspired you to dive deep into the struggles many smaller designers and labels face? 

A: My background is in marketing, and that’s where I see sustainable brands struggle the most. They’re so focused on their mission that they often neglect the rest of their business. Launching this podcast felt like a way I could address some of those challenges—and bring in some of the smartest people I know in the industry to support the small businesses in our community and help them succeed.

Unfortunately, a lot of brands don’t get the balance between their mission and their business. It’s delicate. It’s challenging to navigate not wanting to promote overconsumption while being a sustainable brand. But we need these mission-driven businesses to succeed if we want to truly make fashion more sustainable. We need viable alternatives to fast fashion.

Avoiding the tough questions is not going to move the industry forward. We have to discuss these things in order to make true progress.

3. Q: Looking at broad themes in sustainable fashion brands, what do you think brands are failing to understand?

A: My whole life is sustainable fashion. I love it, but I don’t prefer the stereotypical look of sustainable fashion. Many people are creating all these companies that look the same, and the main message is that you should buy from them because they’re sustainable. Well, what’s the logic there?

Even though we want people to buy more sustainably, brands need to understand that there are many reasons why people buy what they buy. It’s style. It’s fit. It’s price. It’s what makes you feel good. For a lot of people, things like sustainable sourcing and using less water are appealing, but they aren’t the number one reasons they shop. There’s a lot of work sustainable brands need to do here to understand consumer psychology.

4. Q: That brings to mind a provocative question that writer Whitney Bauck asked a few years ago: Do we really need any more sustainable fashion brands? 

A: We truly don’t need more of the same sustainable fashion brands. What’s happening is that plenty of brands are starting, but they’re not differentiating. They’re not doing it better than what’s already out there. They’re not filling a need.

There are already 50,000 brands that make boxy dresses in linen. [laughs] These brands often have their hearts in the right place. They say they want to change the fashion industry. But they’re not going to save the world by creating more of what we don’t need. It’s just excess at this point. It’s more waste.

If you really want to change the fashion industry, you have to have a good reason for bringing a product into the world. You need to be willing to do what it takes to do it successfully.

All of these brands are making all these grand claims. Blah, blah, blah. And yet, we’re still here.

5. Q: Fashion is already a hard business for small upstarts to enter. “Sustainability” presents another layer of complexity. What are some of the key challenges you’ve noticed that independent labels face?

A: I constantly get DMs on Instagram from smaller brands saying, ‘I don’t have the budget.’ It seems like a chicken-and-egg situation where these businesses know they need marketing and PR in order to grow, but then they don’t have the budget to pay for it.

I get it. The Sustainable Fashion Forum started with a girl who had an interest in sustainability and an Instagram. I never did any ads. I hardly had anything in my bank account. In fact, in the early years, my electricity, my phone, my internet were often turned off because I didn’t have any money. I put everything I had into growing this platform because that’s what I was passionate about. I grew it from nothing to a platform of over 200,000 followers—a platform that now has the attention of these massive brands and the leaders in fashion.

So, it’s a huge misconception that you have to have a ton of money to grow your business. It’s not true. There’s a lot you can do to grow your business with absolutely no money.

 

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6. Q: “Sustainable fashion” has, for better or worse, become a buzzword in the past few years. How have the conversations in the SFF community evolved as a result?

A: I started this platform because I wanted to learn, so I didn’t immediately know what questions to ask. In the early days, if I’m being completely transparent, it was surface level. I was trying to appeal to these big brands because I wanted them to participate in the conference. I wanted to have conversations they were comfortable having. I felt like I was watering down what I was doing.

Then at a certain point, I just realized: The big brands aren’t participating, anyway. And no one is sponsoring us for watering down the questions. So why try to keep them comfortable? I launched this platform to ask the questions I was curious about, so I eventually started digging into the questions people still want answers to. People want to know the truth.

Avoiding the tough questions is not going to move the industry forward. We have to discuss these things in order to make true progress. Otherwise, we’re going to keep circling around the same problems. I don’t want to be having these same conversations in 30 years.

Creating change means that we keep going even through the hard parts, even through the parts that are annoying as hell.

7. Q: What advice do you have for people who are pushing for change in fashion and seeing little in the way of progress?

A: I had this moment last year. I was putting together the programming for the conference, and I realized we were literally talking about all the same issues from when we started. All of these brands are making all these grand claims about what they’re doing and how they’re going to change this and that and blah, blah, blah. And yet, we’re still here.

So I would say, whatever you do, don’t stop. Keep going. Even if you’re asking the same questions and getting the same answers. Because here’s the thing: If we all just get frustrated and stop, then there’s really, truly going to be no progress.

Remember that the frustration is part of the drive that motivates you. You have to keep pushing through, because nothing will change if we’re all like, this is hard; if we’re all like, why am I still talking about the same things?

And maybe something that’s frustrating you, well, maybe that’s an area for you to get involved, where you can help to push change forward.

Author bio: 

JD Shadel is a London-based journalist, editor, and strategist, whose writing appears in The Washington Post, Condé Nast’s them., VICE, BBC News, Bloomberg, and many other outlets. Their work often centres on issues of justice and the experiences of LGBTQ+ people. In 2017, VICE editors named their reporting on historical queer activism among the “Best Writing of 2017″, and they’ve played leading roles in projects and publications honoured by the U.S. Travel Association and the Webby Awards. At Good On You, JD serves as Head of Content, building on their decade of experience in community-driven digital media and a lifetime of second hand shopping. (Author photo by Celeste Noche.) Find them on Twitter and their website.

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‘Anti-waste’ + ‘Gender-free’

When we talk about modern fashion’s “linear economy”, what we really mean is that you can trace a distressingly clear line from sweatshops to landfills. Added together, the most profitable brands produce billions of new garments every month. And even if those clothes get donated to thrift stores, many eventually end up in mountains of rubbish—often in countries like Ghana, where fashion’s endemic wastefulness causes environmental catastrophe.

Artist and designer MI Leggett envision a more circular future. Under the moniker Official Rebrand, Leggett take fashion’s leftovers and give them new lives. For this ongoing project, they’ve sourced discarded and abandoned clothing from closets, factories, and even the free boxes in college dorms. Then, they alter and “rebrand” those garments with their striking hand-painted designs. Over the past few years, their upcycled clothing has earned a cult following on Instagram, been worn by celebrities such as Billy Porter, and appeared at New York Fashion Week’s 2020 “Men’s Day” with a subversive genderless show titled “What is a Man?”

Leggett’s work is a protest to fashion as usual in more ways than one. They coined the term “anti-waste” to describe their ethos, which they also define as “gender-free”. In other words, transness and queerness are central to their concept of sustainability. We recently sat down with Leggett to learn more about their sourcing process, their affinity with Berlin’s creative scenes, how to get into upcycling, and the link between queerness and sustainability.

6 Q&As on protesting fashion’s status quo

1. Q: You started questioning the fashion industry’s status quo in college, creating your first designs in your dorm with students’ discarded garments. What were some of the formative moments that shaped your creative vision?

A: I’ve always been really into transforming things that people might consider excess or waste and making them into something unique and beautiful.

A creative breakthrough for me was when I was living in Berlin and working for the designer Fábio M Silva, who had me paint on clothes. The moment that I put a paintbrush onto a t-shirt, I was like, whoa, I really like doing this. And as a nonbinary person, while I wasn’t out yet, I had never really found clothes that felt like myself. Taking this finished object and just deciding it was not done yet, that I could make it totally my own, was really empowering. I was completely hooked.

So after leaving Berlin, when I was back for my senior year at Oberlin College, I decided to make my thesis about the theories behind some of these ideas I was exploring. I based it on the writings of Judith Butler and thinking about the differences between art and fashion and consumerism—using these as a way of opening doors to queerness, self-expression, and gender.

2. Q: Let’s talk about your sourcing, as it’s central to your design practice: Where do the garments and materials you work with come from? 

A: When I was in Berlin, there was a big culture of leaving clothes on the street if people didn’t want them anymore. That’s where a lot of my material came from then. Back at Oberlin, I started sourcing discarded clothes left by other students. There would be a free box in every dorm. The stuff that hadn’t been taken from the free boxes would eventually be put into this room, and I would take clothes from there.

Since being in New York, I source from leftovers: I get a lot of donations from people who are clearing out their closets. They’ll just give me trash bags full of clothes, and that can be really great. And for a lot of my work lately, I’ve been using the inventory left after a luxury sportswear brand went out of business. I do most of the painting and alterations myself, but working with deadstock can be cool since I can make multiple pieces at once.

3. Q: You mentioned deadstock, which is a telling symptom of the much larger problems in fashion like overproduction and overconsumption. What does that waste tell us about the fashion industry’s impact?

A: So much of the industry is founded on these external costs. Brands too often put the cost on the environment and put the cost on the workers. You don’t always see that cost reflected in the prices of the clothing. People have become really desensitised to clothing prices with the likes of Forever 21. Fast fashion has really distorted people’s perception of the value of work. And the value of creating objects with virgin materials. These brands know they need to feign an air of environmental consciousness if they want to stay relevant. But they’re often not addressing those external costs to the environment and to workers. It’s really disheartening.

Fast fashion has really distorted people’s perception of the value of work. And the value of creating objects with virgin materials.

MI Leggett

4. Q: The sheer amount of new items dropped by many eCommerce sites on a weekly basis has led to countless stories of small designers’ work being stolen. You recently suffered that yourself. What has that experience shown you about the way fashion operates today? 

A: It’s horrifying, and it’s just part of their business model that they know that they’re too big to get sued. Brands could just give credit where credit is due and pay people for their creative work. But to produce things so cheaply, their R&D is just stealing—it’s not nurturing artists. I was very sad to see that there were originally two eCommerce companies that were selling my shirt. I checked a week later, and there were ten more. I’ve pretty much had to be my own lawyer, sending cease and desist letters to all of them. It’s flattering in a way that people think this shirt—the “angels have no gender but lots of sex” shirt—is worth copying. But it shows you how these business models are based on stealing people’s ideas, people’s labour. It goes back to the problems with the entire system as it is.

5. Q: People are increasingly aware of greenwashing and are increasingly sceptical of the sustainability claims we see from many major brands. What does that mean to you as a designer, with so much of your practice focused on protesting that system? 

A: It’s one of those things where if you have a big enough marketing budget and people to spin things however you want them, brands can craft their public perception to be completely different than what it actually is. I’m very sceptical when I see big brands who are like, we’re going to shoot some people in a field, and there will be raw cotton. It’s like they’re just trying to trick people into thinking they’ve changed, but all they’ve really changed is the packaging and marketing. What something claims to be isn’t necessarily what it is.

That’s why for the past two Earth Days, myself and [hand-painted, gender-free label] HECHA / 做 have released an anti-greenwashing zine that has different articles, skill-sharing, tutorials, and essays. It’s tips and tricks on things like making your clothes last longer and properly washing them. It’s sort of a manifesto about greenwashing, how to avoid it, and what to look out for as a consumer.

6. Q: You define your work as both ‘anti-waste’ and ‘gender-free’. How do you describe the connection between those two concepts—de-gendering fashion and true sustainability?

A: There are a lot of different ways I think about that. On a material level, I see being queer as being against the norm and rejecting the overarching expectations of society. And by transforming something that society said was done and rebirthing it and giving it a new life—that feels inherently queer to me. There’s a material fluidity that I think about there, transforming and making something into what works for you as opposed to what works for these systems of binary clothing and the binary structure of society. That feels like an inherent connection.

Another thing I think about is how all these systems of oppression are so tied together. So all the strides that we’re making in some parts of the world for queer rights, we’re not going to be able to continue to do that—to liberate people in every country and in every socioeconomic bracket—if we’re all on fire and don’t have any water to drink. I envision a world where everyone can have the freedom to be who they are. But that can’t really happen if we’re going to have a climate apocalypse. So we all need to know that our futures are bound up together, and that solidarity is the most important thing.

 

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What’s the future of fashion?

Every time the major fashion weeks wrap up in hubs like London and New York City, we get a wave of predictions based on what’s spotted on the runway and in the streets. Colours, materials, and silhouettes get sorted into what’s in and what’s out—driving the treadmill of trends that seems to move faster with each season.

Today, styles churn at a feverish pace, with looks from the catwalk and our TikTok feeds turning over in a blink. Fast fashion brands, in particular, seem to have a new answer for what’s next every week—adding up to billions of garments produced each month that inevitably land in mountains of waste in countries like Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Côte d’Ivoire.

At this point, the industry’s obsession with trends comes off as not only unimaginative but dangerously out of touch. The future we need is not one where sustainability is a mere sidebar to business as usual. The more you educate yourself on fashion’s impacts on the climate emergency and big brands’ human rights records, the more you see we need to re-envision the entire system—a system that, for example, fuels profits for a few white billionaires while millions of garment workers remain trapped in poverty.

That’s why, as Paris Fashion Week marks the end of 2021’s major shows, we’re not focused on the must-shop trends. Instead, we’re pausing to question what a more sustainable future for fashion could look like.

For some fresh views, we tapped Centre for Sustainable Fashion (CSF) at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, one of the leading research centres in the world focused on challenging fashion’s status quo. We invited rising voices, advocates, and leading researchers to dream big with us—asking, “If you could define one element of fashion’s future, what would you change?”

These 11 future of fashion perspectives range from the specific to the holistic, from augmented reality exposing fast fashion retailers to redistributing the exploitative systems of power that define modern fashion. Connecting the dots between them, the scope of the problems we face becomes clear—and a manifesto emerges for a more hopeful future.

End the trend cycle

Aniela Fidler Wieruszewska, designer and maker

We should pay more attention to extending a product’s lifetime and alter the destructive pattern of the current trend-led clothing life cycle.

The fashion industry operates at high speed, benefiting from ferociously short production cycles and ever-changing trends chasing future and newness. Most fashion products are designed for obsolescence, and their perceived value peaks at the moment we buy them.

We need different narratives and behaviours—ones that orient fashion towards longevity and the preservation of nature and human experience. Creating alternative, longevity-focused value models requires new ways of appreciating.

I think marketing plays an important role in the way we use and think about clothes. I have a lot of interest in communication, how it influences our behaviours, and how it could be lessening our appetite for unreflective consumption—and consequently, the destruction of the planet.

Growth ≠ success

Natasha Mays, student

I truly believe that imagination is just the step before making something a reality, and so the one thing I would change is the fashion industry’s connection to human beings—through society and culture. Fashion’s idea of growth as a marker of success perpetuates slavery, appropriation, racism, shallow values, and financial burdens. Without change in these areas, truly sustainable fashion will remain a privilege for those who are not marginalised by race, education, or wealth.

It matters to me because, as a woman of colour, I have been fortunate to have the privilege of a good and continuing education, which has afforded me opportunities to ‘see the world’ more speculatively. It sounds cheesy, but I try to be the change I want to see and use my privilege and creativity to shine a light on issues that affect the future of my community through sustainable methods—working with textile waste, natural dyes, and upcycling.

We need different narratives and behaviours—ones that orient fashion towards longevity and the preservation of nature and human experience.

Aniela Fidler Wieruszewska – designer and maker

No more clothes in landfills

Sandy Black, Professor of Fashion & Textile Design and Technology

I started my sustainability journey through an abhorrence of waste. Before working in academia, I ran my own small business as a knitwear designer and producer, selling to prestigious stores worldwide. I understand firsthand what it means to run a design-led business.

Fashion is still an endemically wasteful and largely craft-based industry, and I would like to see many things scaling and converging to achieve a more sustainable future of fashion, for example:

1. No more clothes go to landfills. The infrastructure is everywhere to enable easy take back, swapping, and repurposing of used garments and eventual recycling when worn out through large scale success of textile-to-textile recycling processes.
2. We unlearn cheap fashion. Prices have been artificially lowered in the mass market’s ‘race to the bottom’. Prices need to rise to reflect the true costs and value. We need a revaluing of fashion and the payment of living wages across the workforce. A living wage would not in itself impact the end price too much.
3. Reduction in overproduction and mindless consumption. I want to see the transition to effective made-to-order and small batch production systems as standard to increase people’s love for their clothes, resulting in longer use.
4. Support for micro and small fashion businesses innovating for sustainability. Incentivise small sustainable fashion businesses through tax breaks, and level the playing field compared to large companies or others not demonstrating sustainable practices. That way, creativity and social justice can thrive in diverse local communities.

Redistribute the power

Dilys Williams, Professor of Fashion Design for Sustainability and Director at CSF

I would change the distribution of power in fashion, so that fashion’s cultural, social, economic, and ecological value was equally spread across all of life.

It matters to me because I respect our interbeing, a word that Tibetan monk Thich Nhat Hanh uses to express the interconnectedness of all things.

Nature- and equity-first education

Nina Stevenson, educator

Fashion education must acknowledge our complicity in ecological collapse and social inequity. Through education, the role of fashion design, business, and media can be explored safely and radically restore and regenerate our social, economic, cultural, and ecological systems.

So I would love to imagine a world where everyone engaged in fashion has access to education that considers fashion from a nature- and equity-first viewpoint. A world where we have the time and space to connect with and learn from others, and we can design fashion products, systems, and services that are nurturing well-being for nature and people, and not just nurturing the wealth of a handful of individuals at the expense of our planet.

Intervene in overconsumption

Anna Fitzpatrick, lecturer and PhD candidate

I am interested in exploring and intervening in the idea of fashion as consumption. Of course, fashion is about more than shopping, but much of the unsustainability of fashion is linked to the speed and volume at which it is produced and consumed.

With this in mind, I would hope to change our understanding of ourselves and our place in the world so we can recognise how important our relationships with one another, the non-human world, and ourselves truly are. Then we can recognise when we turn to shopping as a balm for our emotions, for a sense of agency, or as a form of escape. When we learn to understand these desires, our ideas about success and connection may shift and then perhaps our shopping habits will, too.

Redefine what we value

Naomi Bulliard, Head of Strategy at CSF

I would like to redefine how we value our contributions as human beings to the fashion industry—redefining what is of value and to whom. Not defining success by efficiency or proficiency alone but by care for each other, the planet, and its species.

I like the idea of moving away from creating more of what Margaret Heffernan describes as ‘super chickens’ and instead valuing each other’s contributions. Moreover, moving away from human imposition to a more equitable planet decentred from human-centred everything.

In terms of sustainable fashion, this means that economic gains alone or production efficiency will not mean anything if biodiversity and human equity are negatively impacted. What matters to me is our interconnection with each other on and with the planet and seeing our multiplicity as an asset. I think our commitments should be defined by the positive impact they can have on each other as human beings and with other species and nature.

Using technological innovation for good, we can chart future visions of making shopping a more ethical, transparent, and fun experience.

Vishal Tolambia – multi-disciplinary fashion designer; founder, Humanity Centred Designs

Tech to filter the greenwashing

Vishal Tolambia, multi-disciplinary fashion designer; Founder, Humanity Centred Designs; sustainability research student

Transparency—a term lately used by every brand. I feel there is still a lack of transparency even though every brand claims to have sustainable values, ethics, and commitments. Brands are failing to provide consumers with enough information. Every consumer has their commitments and goals in terms of sustainable products, but they find it difficult when it comes to making a better choice due to a lack of understanding and supply chain visibility about particular products.

Now, let’s imagine harnessing the power of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and augmented reality for good. That could transform the fashion industry and bring genuine transparency. It’s a new vision of the future in which users can access the real-time brand supply chain information, as well as provide a mechanism to match with products that share similar personal sustainable values and commitments to find a perfect match. I’ve channelled these ideas into a speculative project of fashion dating called ‘Fashion Affair.’

No doubt new technological innovations have already started to shift the business paradigm of the fashion industry. But I believe we must think beyond present boundaries. Using technological innovation for good, we can chart future visions of making shopping a more ethical, transparent, and fun experience.

Stop focusing on ‘doing less bad’

Sarah Needham, Knowledge Exchange Manager at CSF

I would like the future of fashion to redefine desirability and foster a desire for materials that respect nature, a desire for craftsmanship, a desire for longevity that transcends fleeting trends. The fashion industry does not currently accurately account for the natural resources and work that go into creating pieces that all too often only stay in our wardrobes for a matter of weeks or months.

The relationship between the fashion industry and the climate emergency is increasingly well understood. A few brands and retailers have taken steps to rectify some of these wrongs. However, they still operate on a business model based on growth and overproduction. We need to stop focusing on ‘doing less bad’ and redefine success factors with entirely new ways of doing business.

Fashion school = sustainability school

Julia Crew, Course Leader at CSF

If I could make one change it would be to see sustainability seamlessly integrated into all fashion courses. Whilst we have made huge progress in the last few years, there is still more we can do. Such education can provide students—who are the fashion designers, makers and business leaders of the future—with the essential ecological and ethical literacy to redefine the fashion industry. I believe empowering students with this knowledge can lead to a future where fashion recognises and respects planetary boundaries and the equity of all people and living things.

Fashion as community service

Emily Taylor, MA student and designer

Fashion is not just about clothes. I would like to see it redefined from its current status as a commodity to be seen as a service that supports values of co-creation, creative expression, and community. Too often, we focus on the commercial appeal of a garment, forgetting the many layers of value it represents socially, culturally and symbolically.

My perspective is from the fast fashion industry, an industry obsessed with product. If service was the focus of fashion, then upcycling, garment sharing, skills networks, repair, and customisation, amongst many others, could become integrated into our experience of clothing.

An item of clothing itself is not always the thing of value, but rather it is the story of a garment, how it was made, and the memories attached to it that can create value for the wearer. It is possibly a utopian dream, but I believe that if we focused on why people genuinely connect with fashion and worked on ways to offer these instead of simply more products, it could lead to a more sustainable future.

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