What Does 'Sustainability' Mean to You?
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There’s no official playbook for sustainability in fashion.
Because of this, brands and retailers can leverage facets of sustainability into their marketing efforts that amount to a mere drop in the bucket. It’s a free-for-all. Whether beneficial or not, much of the messaging is guided by conjecture. One might wonder if the recent SEC crackdowns on misleading ESG investment claims may also prompt oversight into one of the most pollutant industries.
Sustainability within the scope of fashion is not simply the focus on material production. It’s the human aspect of who is growing the cotton in the fields, and the working conditions and payable wages of those in the factories, how much water is being used to produce denim, for instance, and the fuel used to ship finished products across the globe, and, finally, onto your doorstep - these are barely scratching the surface. It’s so much more, and the majority of it is unseen.
Just pause and think about the number of people who have labored over the very shirt that you’re wearing right now. It’s more than you realize.
Clients will share elements of relative conscious consumption with a plug-and-play model on the basis of some of the elements aforementioned. That doesn’t make anyone wrong. It’s a thoughtfulness that contributes toward a collective understanding and is a necessary call-to-action for us each to hold another accountable as we grow in awareness of what sustainable fashion truly is and will be. What it will mean for the future.
Part of the ambiguity - and the problem - is that the data is not entirely clear as to the global impact that fashion has on the planet, but given that fashion is the sixth-largest industry in the world, you can imagine it’s colossal. As of 2016, the fashion industry is said to be worth an estimated $2.4 trillion.
There are mass-market solutions that are a temporary hold as each of us figure out how to be better consumers and also how to regulate the creation of the very goods you wear every day. The clothing and accessories that make you happy, productive, and expressive. Which are all very important components of life and psychology.
Buying less and buying better sounds great. But it’s much more complicated than that.
What aspects of sustainability in fashion matter to you?
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