May 5, 2019
Week 2: Have it Your Way Fashion
The week for our green challenge has officially begun, and I am having no difficulty whatsoever in meeting the requirements. As i said in my first blog, I typically do not shop more than once every few months, preferring to mend or sew my own garments. What little I do shop is usually second-hand and therefore not contributing directly to the waste of the fashion industry. Instead of letting myself remain complacent, however, I am taking the opportunity to read my classmates blogs and connect the themes of class to this challenge.
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| Image Credit: Greenpeace |
This week we have moved away from discussing sustainability and instead shifted focus to cultural exchanges and representations of Asian fashion among the west. While the focus has shifted so that sustainability or production methods are no longer the center focus, I found links between our readings and the core ideas behind the slow fashion movement. Fast fashion retailers produce billions of dollars and metric tons of waste each year, spurred on by both the demands of retail 'surplus' and the ever-changing appetites of consumers.
Like many other fashion trends in the west, fast fashion companies riff off asian dress styles such as the salwar-kameez but one of the key aspects of these forms of dress cannot be replicated by fast fashion production: the bespoke tailoring that everyday women engage in. From Bhachu, we see an anecdote of a woman who came into a tailor in india, working with the stylist to create a custom piece fit to her form and her tastes.
What if consumer tastes demanded not only imitations of style for these forms of dress, but also appreciated the opportunity for unique and sustainable production? I believe if this happened we would see a lot fewer companies such as H&M feeding the fashion trash machine.
entrepreneurs in London." Transnational Spaces. Routledge, 2004. 52-71.
"Fast Fashion’s Overproduction Is Killing The Planet." April 30, 2019. Well Made Clothes.
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