Eco-friendly and Fair

Fast Fashion and Consumer Behaviour

Becker-Leifhold, Carolin. 2018. Eco-Friendly and Fair : Fast Fashion and Consumer Behaviour. Edited by Mark Heuer. Sustainability in Textiles. London: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781351058353.

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One need not look hard and long to find evidence of the “make, take, waste” paradigm in the textile industry. The fast fashion business model thrives on the “buy now or lose out” marketing approach on steroids fed by social media, and also on the seediness of corrupt governments with lax enforcement of labor, environmental and safety regulations. Indeed, fast fashion serves well as the poster child for the “race to the bottom” with its global inequities between developed and developing economies redolent of colonialism. The increasing annual revenues of fast fashion retailers correlates with the growth of massive ecological, as well as social, problems in the world’s poorest economies, which are wealthy only in abundant low-cost labor.

Concomitant with the growing awareness of the deleterious effects of fast fashion was the tragedy of Rana Plaza in April 2013, in which more than 1,100 garment workers perished in a factory blaze engulfing a building deemed unsafe. Lohmeyer and Schüßler in the opening chapter of this collection identify Rana Plaza as a “focus event,” in which the indelible nature of the event creates a lasting salience among policy makers that heretofore did not exist despite multiple garment factory accidents resulting in fatalities over at least the previous decade.

Thus, Lohmeyer and Schüßler view Rana Plaza as a “focus event,” as it harbors the potential to “allow for change to occur, as [focusing events] might lead to the convergence of already existing ‘streams’ of problems, policies and politics.” Indeed, numerous initiatives were undertaken in Bangladesh by the German government to address the Rana Plaza tragedy. However, Lohmeyer and Schüßler emphasize that these policies and actions focused on the place of production, but not on consumption-oriented initiatives. Herein lies the premise of this collection: consumer attitudes and behaviour need to be adjusted towards more sustainable use and multiple re-uses of clothing in order to reduce the allure of fast fashion among targeted consumers.

In order to ensure societal well-being, lifestyles need to become more sustainable. Particularly in the fashion industry, current consumption and production patterns need to be seen as the foolish and destructive fads they are, in which millions of gullible consumers are manipulated by shareholder-driven CEOs. They need to be replaced by sustainable fashion solutions that do not require a perpetual race to bottom at the expense of workers and the environment.

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Credit: Daniel Rodrigues