Sustainable Fashion

Sustainable fashion is a concept that I have recently been intrigued to find out more about, with the environment and what we can do to help being in the news so heavily in the past few years. I recently read an article by Marnie Woodmeade for Huff post In which she discusses how far the fashion industry has come in terms of sustainability, in which she claims ‘Is on the rise’ but ‘Is not enough’.

Wikipedias definition of sustainable fashion:

“Sustainable fashion, also called Eco fashion, is a part of the growing design philosophy and trend of sustainability the goal of which is to create a system which can be supported indefinitely in terms of human impact on the environment and social responsibility. It can be seen as an alternative trend against fast fashion.”

Plastic and how we can reduce its use has been in the news a lot in the recent months, with the plastic bag tax and the reduction of plastic straws. However, another way in which we can reduce our carbon footprint is by reducing the amount of clothes we throw away. With shops opening that sell cheap quality clothes, we have become a throw away society – we buy things that are ‘In trend’ and throw them away after only a couple of uses due to the bad quality.

I hadn’t realised how much waste the fashion industry produces until doing a bit of research on it – according to Edge (used by Huff post) ‘the clothing and textile industry is the largest polluter in the world’. Apparently ‘Last year alone, 12.8 million tons of textiles were discarded’.

Reducing Waste

Vivienne Westwood was one of the first designers to be an advocate for reducing waste in the fashion industry and she recommends that consumers “Buy less. Choose well.” and to “Make it last. Quality, not quantity.” And she mentions that “Everybody’s buying far too many clothes.” Her recommendation is to buy good quality clothes that suit your own individual personal style, to buy items that you will still love in years to come and will last that time. Westwood has also been a pioneer and activist to climate change, openly talking about her concerns – she says to the guardian ‘I’m just hoping that people will realise that climate change is on our doorstep.’

These ‘good quality’ clothes don’t need to be expensive, there are many reasonable priced shops that do some great quality, unique clothing too. My personal favourite is Zara, sometimes little rips can form in the clothes but I have not brought anything yet that I couldn’t sew back together easily.

If you do have items you no longer want, why not make a bit of money by selling them online. My favourite is depop, its easy to use and is mostly used by people who want to sell and/or buy clothes but there are many others out there too such as eBay or shpok, Or you can give the items to a charity shop – one mans trash is another mans treasure.

For some other ways to think about how to shop more ethically heres a great article by ‘ELLE’ titled the lazy girls guide to sustainable fashion.

Brands That Focus On Sustainable Fashion

There are also certain brands who are making an effort to be more conscious of where they’re sourcing the materials to make clothes, who is making them and the chemicals that are being used to make the materials, here is an article by the independent highlighting some of last autumns best sustainable fashion brands. And here is another by Marie Claire. I found these really interesting because some of these brands are ones that I’ve never heard of before and I will certainly consider shopping in some of these in the future.

These aren’t all high end brands, many high street stores now are making an effort to keep the environment in mind, for example, H&M came out with a collection a couple of years ago called H&M conscious that focuses on ethically sourced materials.

Being conscious of your clothing choices and reducing waste of clothing is only a small step but it will certainly make a huge difference to the environment.