Fashion Weeks
Should we boycott fashion month or build a more sustainable alternative?
Image by Fashion Revolution
If you can’t beat them, join them. Or boycott them?
Men’s fashion weeks in the Big Four have just rounded up for the season, and now the countdown is on for the Autumn/Winter 2020 women’s shows. But are these exclusive industry Instagram-athons still relevant in a digital age where climate change is one trend that will not pass anytime soon?
Back in September, Extinction Rebellion turned their placards towards one of the world’s most polluting industries - fashion. Protestors swarmed on London Fashion Week, holding a ‘funeral’ for the event and demanding the British Fashion Council call it a day in the name of the climate crisis. XR even started a Boycott Fashion Instagram account centred around quitting all clothing consumption. Coming back from the madness myself, I wrote extensively about the pros and cons of cancelling LFW, and my experience of a more sustainable alternative. Recently, I was asked again about the idea of boycotting fashion, and it got me thinking again about the future of this industry.
While I fully support XR’s ethos of disrupting ‘business as usual’ and implementing the mentality of emergency and urgency into the industry’s decision-makers, we must remember that fashion serves multiple purposes. It is a functional object, it is an art form, it is a skilful craft, it is a medium of self-expression and cultural identity… all this before the fact that it is a commercial industry employing millions of people and contributing billions to the economy. Therefore it's not feasible for it just to ‘go away’.
Instead of the boycott mentality, we should be pushing for creative solutions. While I am personally very much 'anti-fast fashion' and have taken a fairly extreme stance by completely quitting all high street shopping for several years now, I don't particularly advocate that everyone needs to take this view. Small changes in a large population are more effective than large changes in a small population - I think we can do better than boycotts to engage the masses with ethical fashion in an accessible way, using existing platforms to make immediate and long-lasting change.
This is not to say that personal fast fashion boycotts are not an effective way to 'detox' from your own shopping habits - it’s a method that worked for me when I was struggling with consumption overload! But when it comes to the behemoth fashion capitals and their non-stop events calendars, it will take more to truly shift the narrative. Maybe going beyond the ‘Positive Fashion’ PR push and instead strictly auditing and regulating the ethics of those designers privileged enough to show would be a good place to start?
NEWSFLASH!
Cosmopolitan | Study finds Thinx period pants have 'toxic chemicals' in the crotch
Fashionista | Online retailers are making ‘sustainable’ fashion more searchable
Eco Warrior Princess | Destroying the Fashion Stigma: How Being Eco-Conscious Can Be Budget-Friendly
Fashion Revolution | Material Shakeups for Ecology’s Sake
ARE YOU LISTENING?
The Sustainable Style Podcast | Sustainability 101
The Business of Fashion | Women Are at the Forefront of the Sustainable Fashion Revolution
The Guardian | We Need to Talk About… the Environmental Impact of our Fashion Addiction
Switch | The A-Z of Ethical Fashion with Ruth MacGilp (that’s me!)
EASY CLIMATE ACTION
Take ThredUp’s Fashion Footprint Calculator quiz to find out the carbon footprint of your shopping, wearing, washing and disposing habits.
Check out the #Do1Thing campaign being championed by local newspapers and websites all across the UK, asking us to take just one simple action to fight the climate crisis - here is an example from the Liverpool Echo.
Join Ella Daish’s #EndPeriodPlastic campaign to demand manufacturers and retailers eliminate plastic from their tampons, pads and packaging. Sign the petition here.
SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND
Read my latest blog post, all about my press trip with iconic ethical beauty brand Lush and what I discovered about their sustainable credentials:
Ethical Before It Was Cool: The Enduring Power Of Lush
SUSTAINABLE FASHION BRAND OF THE FORTNIGHT
Thanks for reading the first ever issue of The Ethical Fashion Roundup!
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See you in two weeks!