So, What's the Deal?

Sustainability.

This word is EVERYWHERE. From celebrities to designers and activists to skeptics, I feel like I cannot go anywhere or read anything without “sustainability,” and its accompanying topics, being thrown directly into my face. Like many other fashion enthusiasts, I understand the basic concept of sustainability – an attempt to minimize and avoid the depletion of earth’s natural resources – but, all in all, I definitely don’t fully understand the role of sustainability and the application of sustainable materials and methods in the fashion industry and fashion production.

Burberry staged a “carbon neutral” show at London Fashion Week.

I work at a boutique, and while perusing the racks during the daily lulls, it hit me – how do I really know what’s sustainable and what’s not. So many designers claim to be sustainable, from ethically sourcing their materials to becoming carbon neutral within their operations, but at the end of the day:

 What is sustainable fashion?

 And, how do consumers really know if what’s labelled sustainable is truly sustainable?

 As stated by Emily Dixon (2019), “...the fashion industry’s current efforts amount to little more than lip service. The pursuit of sustainability is a vast, hazy, yet ever more urgent task – one that many say will require radical and transformative measures. Is fashion truly becoming more sustainable? Or is the concept just another trend” (para. 3)?

During Fashion Month, Kering announced that the whole company would become carbon neutral.

Just last week, in the FashionMash Product Design class, Professor McMahan encouraged students to think deeper about the role of the consumer, to truly become empathetic towards their attitudes, beliefs and understandings. During this reflection, I started to think about the idea of transparency. Defining transparency in my own words, I see it as businesses and brands providing full information about operational processes and production to consumers. Nowadays, consumers expect brands to partake in conversations and efforts surrounding hot-button social issues like sustainability, but with this corporate social responsibility expectation comes greater issues.

 “Greenwashing,” a term coined in the 1980s by environmentalist Jay Westerveld, describes “...companies which grossly overstate the environmental or ethical benefits of their products and services” (Slater, 2019, para. 5). Now, by no means am I claiming that all fashion companies and designers that claim to be sustainable are greenwashing their consumers. All I’m saying is that, in my opinion, before sustainability can truly be implemented into the fashion industry, everyone involved needs to take a step back and think – as it pertains to sustainability, how can we be transparent?

Bye for now,

McGee