A Brief History of Ethical and Sustainable Fashion
Since the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh in 2013, which killed thousands of workers, the fashion industry's interest in sustainable and ethical fashion has grown tremendously.
Every year since then, Fashion Revolution Weeks commemorate the tragedy, and numerous organisations aim to educate consumers on the impacts the fashion industry has on the people and the environment and encourage them to make better fashion choices.
Sustainable fashion is going mainstream, and I think it's essential to take a look back into our history to understand where the movement stems from.
If you're starting out on your sustainable fashion journey, or even if you're a accomplished ethical fashionista and you want to learn more, here's a brief history of ethical and sustainable fashion.
But before we begin, it's necessary to define a few essential keywords:
Sustainable Fashion
Let’s start with the basics: in 1987, the UN described sustainability as:
“development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.
In light of this definition, sustainable fashion refers to a more environmentally-friendly approach to designing, manufacturing and consuming clothes, making sure we cause little to no harm to our planet and don't use up all its natural resources. Sustainable fashion also focuses on extending the life of clothes, using recycled materials and recycling in general.
Ethical Fashion
Ethical fashion is a tiny bit different from sustainable fashion, in the sense that it focuses more on the social impact of the fashion industry: ethical literally means "morally right". We started talking about "ethical fashion" a lot after the collapse of the Rana Plaza in 2013, as we started realising the extreme conditions in which clothes are manufactured.
Ethical fashion covers a wide range of issues such as living wages, working conditions, health and safety, forced labour, child labour. It means going beyond merely following local labour laws. Ethical fashion can also include the fair treatment of animals, vegan and cruelty-free fashion.
Fast Fashion
That's another word we've been hearing a lot since 2013. Fast Fashion, is derived from "Fast Food" and is used to describe clothes are that produced quickly and inexpensively to fit the latest trends, usually copied directly from the runway. Fast Fashion brands are incredibly cheap and have been associated with overproduction, waste, deplorable working conditions and terrible environmental impact. In short, they're not exactly ethical and sustainable. Fast Fashion pioneers include H&M, Zara and TopShop, although SUPER Fast Fashion (so even worse than their elders) brands have been emerging, such as Fashion Nova, Zaful, Missguided and Boohoo.
(if you're still a bit confused by all this terminology, I recommend reading my Ultimate Sustainable and Ethical Fashion Glossary)
A Brief History of Ethical and Sustainable Fashion
There's one thing these three words have in common: fashion. And to understand how the fashion industry came to be so unsustainable and how the sustainable fashion movement emerged as a response, it's crucial to know how the industry evolved, as a whole.
In classic fashion theory (as defined by my good friend, philosopher and sociologist George Simmel), fashion used to be about status and wealth. The wealthiest used to set the trends, which then trickled down to the masses. The key was being up to date.
In the mid 19th century, Parisian couturiers became the industry's leaders and trend-setters and department stores, and tailors reproduced the freshest (although I don't think they referred to fashion as fresh at the time) patterns for the people, fashion still came from the top.
Industrial Revolutions happened, and new technological advancements, like the steam machine, significantly increased productivity.
At the start of the 20th century, mass manufacturing appeared, and in the 1950s the consumer society emerged, characterised by an increased production and consumption rate thanks to marketing.
That's when we started seeing some kind of sustainable fashion movement. From the late 1960s, the consumerist society was confronted with rebellious movements, beginning with the hippie revolution, which embraced natural fabrics and a return to a simpler way of life and was clearly anti-fashion. It was then followed by the punk and goth movements of the 70s and 80s, which also rejected the traditional idea of fashion, preferring unique second-hand and vintage pieces and mixing styles. The late 1980s were also marked by anti-fur movements. Sustainable and ethical fashion was beginning to appear.
But the 1990s saw a wave of democratisation in fashion. Due to the rise in global communication and offshore manufacturing, fashion became cheaper and more accessible than ever. Production and consumption rates accelerated even more. Fast Fashion was born.
At the same time, "eco-fashion" movements, closer to the sustainable fashion movements of today, started to appear, with companies such as Esprit launching its « Ecollection », Patagonia and Katharine Hamnett raising awareness on the environmental impacts of the fashion industry.
Up until that 24th of April 2013, when the Rana Plaza collapse and the world really started realising how bad the fashion industry had become.
Documentaries, like The True Cost, started highlighting all the issues and the interest in ethical fashion grew again.
Subscribe to TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/sxaw6h Subscribe to COMING SOON: http://bit.ly/H2vZUn Subscribe to INDIE TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/1F9OK9b Like us on FACEBOOK: http://goo.gl/dHs73 Follow us on TWITTER: http://bit.ly/1ghOWmt The True Cost Official Trailer 1 (2015) - Documentary HD The True Cost is a documentary film exploring the impact of fashion on people and the planet.
Today, thanks to many movements and organisations, we're also beginning to realise how harmful our consumerist society has been to the people and our planet. The sustainable fashion movement is gaining in importance, and more and more consumers are reducing and changing the way they consume fashion, in an attempt to force the industry to clean its sh*t up.
In the last few years, we've been seeing a rebirth of counter-movements. Slow Fashion has been a growing trend, advocating for a more holistic approach to fashion and a slowing down of the rate at which we produce and consume.
The awareness of clothes lifecycle is also growing, leading to vintage clothes shopping becoming more and more accepted and fashionable.
Recycling and recycled clothing have also been gaining in popularity, as well as up-cycling, and circular economy practices, which promote methods to add back value to old clothes have also emerged.
Fashion can sometimes be seen as frivolous, but the fashion industry is one of the major economic players on the market, which significantly impacts human beings all over the world, as well as the environment. So it's vital to understand the fashion industry and ethical movement’s history, how it works and how it evolved, in order to change it for the better.
Sources:
Black, S. (2008) Eco-Chic, the Fashion Paradox. London: Black Doc Publishing.
Black, S. (2015) ‘Fashion and Sustainability’ in Bibliographical Guides. London: Bloomsbury Academic. [Online] DOI:10.5040/9781474280655-BG008
Braungart, M. and McDonough, W. (2002, reprinted 2009) Cradle to Cradle: Re-Making the Way We Make Things. London: Vintage
Henninger, C., Alevizou, P. and Oates, C. (2016) ‘What Is Sustainable Fashion?’ Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management: an International Journal, 20(4) pp. 400-416. [Online] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JFMM-07-2015-0052
Minney, S. (2016) Slow Fashion: Aesthetics Meets Ethics. Oxford: New Internationalist Publications Ltd.
Steele, V. (2010) ‘Ethical and Eco-Fashion’ in The Berg Companion to Fashion. London: Bloomsbury Academics.
Svendsen, L. (2006) ‘Fashion Consumption’ in Fashion: A Philosophy. London: Reaktion Books Ltd.
The True Cost. (2015) Directed by Morgan, A. [Online video] Available through Netflix
