FASHION
Gaining Steam: The Battle Against Overconsumption
By: Joy Mao, Senior Editor Edited by: Eleanor Unsworth, Editorial Executive
Joy Mao, Senior Editor
In today’s ever-changing climate of environmental awareness, sustainability and fashion are two concepts that are frequently paired together. “Eco-friendly,” “conscious,” “ethical,” and “transparency,” are all words that brands tend to use when attributing company practices. Whether this regards material, production, or traceability, brands push to market themselves as “green.” While this is one step towards the right direction, the fashion industry itself remains a main contradictory perpetrator in one field: overconsumption.
Throwaway fashion culture, a product of overconsumption, has caused irreversible effects to the planet. Holding the role of the third largest industrial polluter after fossil fuels and agriculture, the fashion industry has contributed to 10% of the annual carbon footprint. Microplastics from synthetic fabrics, water pollution from toxic dyes, and physical waste into landfills, all contribute to the ongoing damage. One direct and unavoidable contributor to the damage is advertising.
Fashion advertising itself becomes a form of pollution when it consistently pushes out new trends for which fast fashion is an easy fix. The hamster-wheel trend cycle has consumers feeling constantly behind due to the clothing’s social value or changes in fashion, leading them to look for something new that can be acquired quickly. In the documentary Minimalism, sustainable fashion consultant Shannon Whitehead talks about the ongoing pattern. “Maybe when our moms were shopping for clothes or our grandmothers, there were four seasons in a year, or maybe even two seasons… Now we work in a cycle of 52 seasons. They want you to feel like you’re out of trend one week so that you will buy something new the following week.” The persuasion through advertising emphasizes clothing as a status symbol that consumers should aspire for. Some brands such as H&M, Burberry, Louis Vuitton, Michael Kors, and Juicy Couture have made a great effort to prevent consumers from buying “last season” items, going as far as to burn unsold goods. Destroying clothing not only releases CO2 emissions, but the energy recouped through burning goods is not enough to balance out the energy used to create the garments.
In the same documentary, Dr. Juliet Schor, economist and sociology professor at Boston College talked about the importance of care for clothing material. She brings up the term “materialist” and how the word has become parallel with material possessions itself rather than actual material. “We need to be true materialists like really care about the materiality of goods. Instead we’re in a world where material goods are so important in their symbolic meaning.” Pushing for long-lasting and sustainable material creates an opportunity for consumers to care about quality rather than quantity.
The Woolmark Company, based in Australia, recently collaborated with Park Village, 20(Something), and Studio Birthplace to produce the “Wear Wool, Not Waste” campaign. Depicting a zombie apocalypse in which the zombies are portrayed as synthetic pieces of clothing chasing humans, the campaign creates unsettling scenery to portray the impact of synthetic fibers to the environment. To put it into numbers, in 2023, 97,180 million metric tons of synthetic fibers were produced, while only 26,100 million metric tons of natural fibers were produced. The campaign pushed for consumers to purchase wool-based products as an alternative, as it is a more environmentally friendly alternative in comparison to synthetic fibers.
In another endeavor to promote sustainable living practices, advertising company Leo Burnett Worldwide Inc. joined with pop up agency Agency for Nature to create the “Girls Just Wanna Grow Plants” campaign. Aimed towards young women to promote a culture of slowing down in life and consumption, “rustle culture” pushes for prioritization of care for the mind and the environment. Nudging towards nature in this campaign represents a bigger idea of realistic practicality in a more nature-oriented lifestyle. With mottos such as “Tired of the Hustle, Wanna Hear the Leaves Rustle” the campaign has pushed for initiatives in mental health and sustainability.
Some brands have taken responsibility for transparency in other ways. GANNI, a Danish fashion brand focused on “affordable luxury,” advertised itself as “not a sustainable brand.” In an interview with Future VVorld, GANNI Material Innovation Lead Juliee Verdich noted “we don’t identify as a sustainable brand, because at its core fashion thrives on newness and consumption, which is a major contradiction to the concept of sustainability.” This transparent admission to being in an industry that thrives off consumption sheds new light to what a brand can do to counteract negative actions. “Instead we are, and always have been, focused on becoming the most responsible version of ourselves. We’re not perfect but committed to making better choices every day, minimizing our social and environmental impact across the entire business.” Through this new sense of transparency, the brand has been able to work in more sustainable collaborations, focusing on a transformation in quality and care.
Many different companies in the industry have found a shift in their advertising and self-branding, using the battle against overconsumption as an opportunity to influence decisions rather than to simply sell a product. On a bureaucratic level, governments have also begun to put regulatory policies in place to crack down on corporate responsibility. The EU legislation has recently banned the destruction of unsold clothing, requiring companies to take responsibility for produced waste, and promoting more durable and long-lasting clothing. Global organizations such as the United Nations Environment Programme and UN Climate Change have also been involved in pushing for better practices in the fashion industry. In 2023, they published “The Sustainable Fashion Communication Playbook,” a guidebook for those in communicator roles in the fashion industry.
Pushing for better practices in one of the biggest consumer industries in the world is a challenge, however this remains a job for both the company and the consumer. Countering overconsumption and pushing for a more sustainable lifestyle begins one person at a time.
: Fash10nBeautySU!
