Sustainable Fashion

Designer Definition Guide

Fashion Brands Definitions

Fashion Industry Corporations

From Donations to Design Decisions

The development inside the definition is the move from gesture to method. Environmentalism used to be manifest in fashion through a percentage of sales being donated to a charitable cause. A donation is real money for a real cause, but it leaves the clothing itself unchanged: the same fibres, the same dyes, the same factories and the same disposal at the end of the garment's life. Designers adopting sustainability changed the object instead, using more environmentally friendly materials and methods in clothing production. That is a harder commitment because it has to be made garment by garment, in fibre choice, in fabric sourcing, in dyeing and finishing, in how much waste a pattern creates, and in how long the finished piece is built to last. It is also a more verifiable one, because a material can be specified and checked in a way that an intention cannot.

The related topics clustered around the term show where the pressure points lie. Textile waste is what clothing becomes when it is discarded, and a garment designed for a short life creates that waste on a schedule. Fashion industry pollution is the production side of the same ledger, in water, chemicals and energy. Upcycle fashion works on existing materials, giving discarded textiles and garments a higher-value second use. Circular fashion designs the whole life of a product as a loop, in which materials are recovered and used again rather than discarded. Organic cotton and organic clothing address the growing of the fibre itself. Sustainable fashion is the umbrella term; those neighbouring terms name the individual mechanisms by which a garment's environmental cost can actually be reduced.

Price, Appearance and Permanence

Two objections have followed sustainable fashion from the start, and the definition answers both. The first is price: sustainable fashion is typically more expensive than clothing produced by conventional methods. The honest answer is that the difference is the cost of the materials and methods themselves, and the judgement offered to the buyer is direct, that helping the environment is worth the price. As production scales and supply chains for sustainable materials mature, the gap can narrow, but a definition should not promise that it will disappear; some of the cost is the point, because the conventional price was achieved partly by not paying environmental costs at all.

The second objection is appearance. Early environmentally minded clothing acquired a dusty, hippy-looking reputation that limited it to buyers who valued the message over the garment. Designers adopting sustainability state explicitly that they are incorporating sustainable practices into modern clothing rather than producing that older look. The change matters commercially and environmentally at once. A sustainable garment that people want to wear, keep and repair displaces more conventional purchases than one bought as a statement and left unworn. The trend's durability points the same way. A movement reported in the May 2007 Vogue as likely to last multiple seasons, and carried since by growing interest in organic clothing and by Hollywood celebrities associating themselves with sustainable fashion, has the character of a permanent change in how clothing is judged rather than a seasonal style. Seasons end; a criterion, once buyers and designers adopt it, is applied to every season that follows.