The Future of Fashion: Deconstructing the Fast Fashion Regime
by Kristen Chen
“Sustainability” has become a buzz word among consumer and industry circles in recent years, and has started to gain traction in the fashion industry. In particular, fast fashion companies that use trend-driven business models have come under fire for creating significant environmental and social externalities, while driving overconsumption and consumer spending by offering cheap price tags. According to the United Nations, the fashion industry is responsible for 20 percent of global wastewater and 10 percent of global carbon emissions, which equates to more than all international flights and maritime shipping. Textile dyeing is also the second largest polluter of water globally. Another aspect of fast fashion is the promotion of a linear economy in which shoppers are encouraged to purchase new items per season and discard them, which increases the generation of waste. If the current rate of textiles being landfilled or burned continues, the fashion industry will use up nearly 25 percent of the world’s carbon budget!
The global injustices of the fashion industry
There are significant externalities that burden marginalized garment and textile workers who are often paid low wages and subjected to long working hours in terrible and dangerous conditions. One such tragedy from these implications is the 2013 infamous collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh, which killed 1,135 people. The complex was built on unstable, swampy ground and was a hub for garment factories that supplied global fashion brands. Bangladesh is the world’s second largest garment exporter, only surpassed by China. However, the minimum monthly wage for garment workers in mainland China is over 4 times higher at about $280, compared with only $68 in Bangladesh. These clandestine outcomes are all happening behind the scenes in global supply chains, and allow shoppers to buy clothing for very cheap relative to the actual costs.
It is also important to note that the fashion industry is not just a single industry; rather, it involves a plethora of industries throughout the lifecycle of each garment we own. For instance, Zara, one of the most prominent global fast fashion brands, pledged to transition to materials like cotton, linen and polyester that are organic, sustainable or recycled. These materials are considered to be more sustainable because they are less require less inputs like water, energy and chemicals to produce them. However, the cotton industry can still have environmental ramifications and health costs by the use of harmful agrochemicals, and land conversion needed to grow the crops can lead to habitat loss or land disputes. Polyester is also a synthetic material that depends on oil extraction and refinement of petroleum, which is far from being sustainable. Even if fast fashion companies claim they are moving to more sustainable production methods, the mass production of clothing still requires the exploitation of natural resources and people. Environmental injustice impacts those who have little to no political voice, nor the resources to confront such environmental hazards that threaten individual and community health. This is even more difficult to address when such injustices are byproducts of corporate and political activity that support these globalized systems. The fast fashion business model that has come to dominate the industry ultimately creates global environmental injustice by generating systems that are doing harm to the environment, workers and society as a whole.
Dissecting the fast fashion empire
So how do we come to understand what this term “sustainability” truly means for the fashion industry, and what solutions on this pathway should look like in order to address these injustices? First, it is important to deconstruct the mainstream Western perspective that perpetuates a myopic view of sustainability steeped in privilege and exclusivity. By opening a new market for “sustainable” products that often come with higher price tags, the Western solution for sustainability attempts to survive as a capitalist enterprise by encouraging people to adopt a sustainable lifestyle by more consumption. It also necessitates environmental harm and further use of environmental and human capital that this new approach is meant to alleviate.
Furthermore, this consumption-driven model is informed by the global economy that has largely been shaped by colonialism and imperial exploitation and has allowed Western countries to consolidate economic and political power. These are the very countries and corporations that are presumably best positioned to lead the charge on sustainability in the industry. But at the same time, there have still been lingering colonial structures at play by these developed countries and global companies exploiting nations for cheap labor to fuel the fast fashion regime. Similar to the way that the expansion of capital investment in Africa has allowed transnational corporations to secure oil by extracting from these nations through a continued process of colonization and unethical work, global fashion brands have outsourced cheap labor to textile and garment workers in their supply chains including countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia and Vietnam. As anthropologist Hannah Appel describes of the making of modularity in oil extraction, corporations can appear removed from local operations by the use of mobile personnel and technologies, which further oppresses already marginalized garment workers. These eerily similar parallels show the intricacies of the fashion industry’s global supply chain, and how injustices can easily arise.
The implications of the Covid-19 pandemic
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic that has largely brought fashion to a halt, opportunities for points of intervention have arisen to bring fundamental change to the industry. The pandemic has shed light on the institutional flaws of the fast fashion business model, especially for garment workers in countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia and Vietnam that are facing destitution after being furloughed due to big fashion brands cancelling orders, and without any support or access to healthcare. Fashion brands are now facing pressure from activist organizations, campaigners and unions to protect workers in their global supply chains from falling into poverty and food insecurity. Low wages, unsatisfactory working and living conditions, and poor health already make them extremely susceptible to the Covid-19 virus. The attention being brought to these systemic flaws will hopefully gain enough impetus to change the unsustainable way the industry has been operating. There is no better time than now to reimagine new systems that create more just environmental and social relationships. Global fashion brands can should begin to have more transparency with their supply chains and start valuing the garment workforce that is at the heart of their industries, yet are still a very marginalized cohort. Companies can also move towards resilient systems by owning more of their supply chain operations, such as through localized manufacturing and pioneering alternative business models. Aside from companies and consumers, policymakers and scientists can also play a significant role in leading the charge for sustainable production and ethical consumption. Environmental health scientists can fill the research gap of the environmental and human health consequences of fast fashion, which can help inform public health policies and practices. The massive freeze in production due to the pandemic crisis has ultimately been very eye-opening to the fragility of systems fueled by growth, profit and production, and has illuminated the need for ensuring environmental justice at every stage of the global supply chain.
Drawing on indigenous wisdom of sustainability
On an individual level, we have the ability to shift the Western narrative on sustainability by living consciously and voting with our money. Supporting secondhand shops is one way to prolong the life of garments, but mending items and recultivating relationships with what we already own can also be personally enlightening and fun ways to approach fashion. It is paramount for the conversation around sustainable fashion to start being more holistic and inclusive for all people, regardless of income level, race or social status. Pursuing circularity and regenerative systems that both have negligible impacts on the earth and on people is a necessary endeavor, and it is similarly important to recognize that these are indigenous concepts that have been systematically neglected and erased through colonialism. Robin Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass highlights the power of indigenous wisdom and the concept of restoration and reciprocity for long-lasting sustainability. Reciprocity involves humans being environmental stewards or caregivers to the natural systems that sustain them. Allegiance to gratitude is another indigenous practice that takes away the power of the modern economy that has convinced us that we need things and need to keep consuming and taking more, rather than appreciating what we already have. In some ways, the current consumption-driven economy works by largely interfering with people’s identities and relationship with nature by selling the idea of production and the need to buy things. The indigenous worldview offers insightful wisdom on reconnecting people with land and sustaining those symbiotic relationships.
Sustainability has been practiced by cultures long before there became an interest and a need for it in response to the unsustainable fast fashion empire. We need to take a lesson from indigenous knowledge and start moving away from an extractive, take-and-dispose outlook to our things, and opt in favor of regenerative systems and circularity that are better for people and the planet. These ideas can be applied to our everyday lifestyles, as well as business models in the fashion industry. Cleaner production methods alone are not sufficient to achieve sustainability in the fashion industry – it needs to also be about reducing consumption overall. It seems like an especially relevant concept in these times of crisis. Drawing on the indigenous practice of gratitude, we can alter the way society and corporations have taught us to think about owning things. Day by day, we can take what we have and capture the joy of nothingness until we find that we are already full and complete.
Sources
https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/putting-brakes-fast-fashion
https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/putting-brakes-fast-fashion
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/18/rana-plaza-collapse-murder-charges-garment-factory
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/27/745418569/can-fast-fashion-and-sustainability-be-stitched-together
Ferguson, James. "Seeing like an oil company: space, security, and global capital in neoliberal Africa." American anthropologist 107.3 (2005): 377-382.
Appel, Hannah. "Offshore work: Oil, modularity, and the how of capitalism in Equatorial Guinea." American Ethnologist 39.4 (2012): 692-709.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/mar/19/garment-workers-face-destitution-as-covid-19-closes-factories
Bick, Rachel, Erika Halsey, and Christine C. Ekenga. "The global environmental injustice of fast fashion." Environmental Health 17.1 (2018): 92.
Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants. Milkweed Editions, 2013.
