Sustainability of Fashion

7 Commentsby Kendra Pierre-Louis on January 10, 2012

This article marks the first in Urban Times’ EcoFashion Series. This series hopes to shed some light on the eco fashion industry by exploring elements such as the sustainability, culture, ecology, psychology, labour and future of fashion. Our authors explore to what extent eco fashion is on the cusp of becoming the next big trend.

A friend justifies her purchase of not one, not two, but three cute, chic, t-shirts in a single fell swoop by pointing to their organic cotton labels and declaring that it’s ok because, “they’re sustainable.” But when it comes to fashion, what does sustainable even mean? Is it sustainability of materials?

Aveda EcoFashion week. Source: Jason Hargrove on flickr.com

Conventional cotton makes up only 3% of the world’s total agriculture production but consumes 25% of the world’s insecticides and, 10% of the world’s pesticides earning it the dubious distinction of being arguably the world’s dirtiest crop. Given that context, organic cotton which uses far fewer pesticides and insecticides seems like a huge, sustainable, step forward.

Similarly, the process of animal tanning, that is turning an animal skin into the more durable material that we call leather, leaves behind a toxic soup of heavy metals and harmful chemicals that foul rivers and streams, kill marine life (harming those dependent on marine sources for food), while also harming the health of workers. From tanning to dyeing, the fashion industry is notorious for harming the planet and its workers.

It makes sense then that there’s an increased interest in not only “green” leather, or modifying the tanning process so that it uses fewer chemicals and energy, but also in sustainable materials overall. In recent years there has been an increase in the adoption of alternative natural fibers such as hemp and bamboo and a rise in recycled materials, such as polyester spun from soda bottles.

At the same time, however, it still takes some 2700 liters of water to make one cotton shirt, – water that could be used to irrigate food crops, alleviate the suffering of those suffering from drought or water shortages, or preserve eco-systems. Further, though greener tanning techniques are improvements over traditional leather tanning methods, they speak little to the ecological cost of raising the cows, or shipping the finished products. In both these cases, some, like the clothing retailer Patagonia, think that “sustainability” in fashion is as much about buying less as it is about the materials.

West Texas Cotton. Source: Calsidyrose on flickr.com

Fashion, it seems, is ever changing – with rapidly rising and falling hemlines and waistlines, materials and shoe styles forcing us to pick up at least a few “seasonal” items every few months, and leaving us with closets so filled that they can’t quite seem to close. Fast fashion, so called for the increasingly rapid pace at which retailers such as Zara and H&M move designs from the catwalk to the store , is often designed to be worn ten times or less. Both retailers, it should be mentioned, have also released organic cotton clothing lines.

Design for Living: The Magazine for Young Moderns

We didn’t use to churn through clothing quite so quickly. A few years ago, the New York Public Library posted a campus fashion poll taken from the September 1941 issue of a magazine called Design for Living: The Magazine for Young Moderns. The poll details the number of articles of clothing college women owned broken down by clothing type (sweater, skirt etc). Apart from the hilarious realization that dickeys were very much a thing, the reprint also shows how many fewer articles of clothing we used to own. While women in Design for Living’s poll max out at 10 pairs of shoes, and sometimes possess as few as two, the average American woman owns an average of 19 pairs of shoes.

The 1941 college woman spent an average of 240.33 dollars on clothes – in 2011 dollars that would be roughly $3,698.63. The average American woman, by contrast, spends less than $2,000 a year for a larger wardrobe. Somehow, we’ve managed to buy more while spending less – increasing textile waste in the process.

Some, such as purveyors of the The Great American Apparel Diet in which participants eliminate “new apparel purchases” for one year, would say we have managed to shop ourselves to death. So which is it? Is sustainable fashion about the quality of the materials or the quantity of our consumption?

In truth, sustainable fashion isn’t any one of these things – it’s all of these things and more. It encompasses the materials we use, the rate we buy – even exploring larger role that fashion plays in our lives. Can fashion’s cultural role in our lives be balanced with its effects on the environment?

Next in the series: Ecology of Fashion

About Kendra Pierre-Louis

Hailing from the New York City borough of Queens, Kendra Pierre-Louis has worked for the United Nations Environment Programme’s Convention on Biological Diversity, the environmental consulting firm Terrapin Bright Green and the New York Botanical Gardens. She has a B.A....

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