Five questions we need to ask about the fashion industry

This is my second blog post about the Advaya Initiative's event Toxic Threads: The Dark Side Of Fashion (you can read Part 1 here). I’ve broken down the Q&A session into five key themes that anyone wanting to make a change, either to the fashion world at large or to their own buying habits, should be considering. 

How do we combat our addiction to consumption?

Orsola de Castro’s solution is to start with yourself: be a sustainable consumer by developing an intimate relationship with the things you buy. Under our current capitalist system we don’t have the ability to be 100% ethical, but we can work on changing our mindset. The fashion industry is built on growth and scale, with success measured in profit, so it’s important to encourage brands that are working to develop different models. Orsola also pointed out that the Latin root of the word “consume” originally meant “to wear out” which so rarely happens now! Alex Jones added that brands are producing more than we can consume, and they need to slow down their production. 

How can we put pressure on manufacturers to do things differently?

Dian Jen Lin mentioned H&M, Adidas and Kering as examples of big brands that are pushing their bounds of sustainability, but she also pointed out that small companies are the ones really innovating and producing futuristic fabrics. The panel all wanted to know: why can’t big brands with big budgets do more? Sophie Slater gave the example of her brand, Birdsong London, which is grant- and crowdfunded and can afford to pay London living wage. If she can do it, what excuse do big brands have for paying poor wages? A brand that cannot afford to pay a living wage has a flawed business model. Orsola added that the way the fashion industry is running now is fairly new: overproduction of cheap, disposable clothes has only been happening on such a large scale for a couple of decades, so it’s not a state of affairs that we are stuck with.

How do you know what not to buy?

Orsola spoke on a subject that is very close to my heart: the importance of understanding and recognising good quality clothes. She asked the audience: “Do you know what a good hem looks like?” She suggested new criteria for what would make an item of clothing a great purchase, like the ability to easily alter it, and emphasised an important baseline: fashion should fit! Alex suggested that we should cultivate a new idea of what “retail therapy” is, focussing on whether we support something positive through our purchases. The “feel-good factor” should come from knowing that the things we buy have made a positive impact during the production process. Orsola wondered if we could get our “fix” through waiting for our clothes to be mended/altered, or enjoy the delayed gratification of waiting for a bespoke piece to be made specially for us. Sophie countered the idea that relying on ethical brands might limit our choices: having a smaller pool of places to shop could make your choices more imaginative.

How can we recycle or offset our purchases? 

Orsola pointed everyone in the direction of Fashion Revolution and their Loved Clothes Last zine, which contains upcycling and mending inspiration, but also pointed out the seriousness of the problems caused by our overconsumption of clothes, and the need to find wide-reaching solutions as quickly as possible. Countries in East Africa are banning imports of second hand clothing because it is destroying their textile industries, and if we want to be responsible world citizens we have to learn that we can’t just dump things because we don’t want them anymore. Change is possible, but we are all going to have to play our part, and brands are going to have to slow down! Alex’s sobering reflection was that the problem is so immense that there isn’t an answer right now: there are still clothes donated to large charity shops that cannot be sold on, and huge volumes of clothing is still ending up in landfill. Sophie’s suggestion was to build links between charities with an excess of donated clothing, and small manufacturers like Birdsong. Buying from brands that specialise in slow manufacture by skilled workers using recycled materials has a positive impact rather than just a neutral one. 

How do we match up artisans and young designers?

Orsola shone a light on one of the depressing realities of the fast fashion landscape: we’ve lost a lot of our traditional artisan makers in Europe. Even though artisanal communities are the second largest employers of women in the world they are often unable to compete with the artificially low prices offered by big fast fashion brands. Sophie spoke about the importance of bridging the gap between young tech-savvy fashion students and older mills or factories with skills but no online presence. Dian Jen Lin gave the example of The Sustainable Angle supporting factories with no social media presence. Alex also mentioned how vital it is to support charities like Labour behind the Label and War on Want who empower women in local communities, amplifying their voices as they advocate for fair wages or union representation.

The final reflections of the panel were summed up in Fashion Revolution’s slogan: Find Out. Be Curious. Do Something. Everyone can take action without having to be an activist, and push for a fashion industry that puts positive impact above profit.

Toxic Threads part 1: four fashion experts reveal the dark side of the industry

On Wednesday 21st February I went to an event organised by The Advaya Initiative: Toxic Threads: The Dark Side of Fashion. Four speakers, Orsola de Castro, Sophie Slater, Dian Jen Lin and Alex Jones gave short presentations on their experience of the fashion industry and why radical change is needed to make the industry forward-looking again. It would be all too easy to get disillusioned by dire environmental predictions or the seemingly insatiable appetite for fast fashion,so I was heartened to hear messages of hope from people who are determined that fashion can, and should, be better.

First up was Orsola de Castro, one of the founders of Fashion Revolution and, in her words, “a recovering fashion designer”. She spoke about the event that spurred her into action: the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh in 2013, in which over 1000 people (mostly women) lost their lives. Horrified that young women died to satiate our appetite for fast fashion, she also soon discovered that brands knew very little about the factories where they were producing their clothing. She encourages transparency, not as the definitive solution but as the first step. At the moment, most brands can’t answer “who made my clothes?” and that needs to change.

Fashion Revolution is an open source platform offering free educational materials, with a focus on transparency and social issues. Its aims are to educate consumers about  the fashion industry, but also to change our minds about the way people currently view their clothes. We as consumers aren’t appreciating or loving our clothes, which means they get discarded more quickly. 

The focus of Fashion Revolution’s current campaign is the overproduction and disposability of clothes, which as Orsola emphasised, isn’t just confined to cheap fast fashion chains. Luxury brands throw away as many clothes as high street shops, suggesting that clothes that cost a lot of money to buy have little value to the manufacturers. As consumers, we have the power to change this culture, and a good starting point is to only buy what you love, and pay attention to what is in your wardrobe. Clothing isn’t just an issue for those in the fashion industry, it affects 100% of the population! To Orsola, “sustainable” and “ethical” aren’t helpful words, they suggest something niche when these practices should just be part of the culture.

As someone who uses those words to define what I blog about, that’s really given me food for thought; am I limiting myself to “preaching to the choir”; could I reach a wider audience by using different language?

Next to speak was Sophie Slater, the co-founder of Birdsong London. The brand’s motto is “No Sweatshop, No Photoshop”  and they employ small groups of women with rare skills to make their clothes, from hand-knitters to seamstresses. Their mission is to empower women, from worker to wearer, and many of their makers are OAPs or migrant workers, who sign the tags on Birdsong garments so customers know who made their clothes. Their makers appear in advertising campaigns as well, which I thought was a great idea; it emphasises how central skilled artisans are to the production of beautiful, good quality clothes.

 As well as paying a living wage, Birdsong London supports women’s organisations, and they have a commitment to caring for the planet as well as people. They use reclaimed or organic fabrics wherever possible; 80% of Birdsong’s Spring/Summer 2018 collection from reclaimed fabrics; they have a partnership with Traid, to use clothes that don’t make it into Traid’s secondhand shops. I really like their emphasis on small production runs, giving their clothes an element of exclusivity and ensuring that their makers are employed but not overworked. 

Dian-Jen Lin, an “interdisciplinary designer/ researcher” had a fascinating take  on the current approach to sustainable fashion. To her, sustainability is passive, regenerative sustainability would be proactive, so what we need is Regenerative Sustainability Activism. This is going to involve a radical re-thinking of how we apply new technologies to garment manufacture. As well as developing fabrics that are recyclable, or use recycled materials, we could develop clothes that actively give back to the world around us. 

Dian-Jen Lin’s current project is to create a photosynthetic material; by adding photosynthetic microorganisms to fabric, your t-shirt could photosynthesise while you go about your business. In cities, millions of people wearing clothes that use up carbon dioxide and give off 

oxygen could be a great solution to air pollution. She works with The Sustainable Angle, who help to promote and develop innovative new fabrics. From leather alternatives made from post-consumer food waste, to sustainable sequins, you can read more about the Sustainable Angle’s latest event, the Future Fabrics Expo, in my recent blog post or on their website. 

Designer Alex Noble gave us his overview of the fashion industry and how it has lost its way. In his opinion, the negative aspects of fashion currently outweigh the good, and we all need to work to redress the balance. The good aspects, the parts which allow designers to unleash their creativity and allow consumers to express their identity were the building blocks of the industry, but are now being exploited by multinationals who are only interested in profit.


Alex believes that we as creatives and consumers have the ability to change the industry, through working together in a more egalitarian way. More communication and collaboration is vital, to encourage transparency and to make sure a more diverse fashion industry is able to flourish. He is in favour of a return to small-scale manufacture, emphasising that garment workers are people, not statistics, and that manufacturers should take into consideration the quality of life their products are creating. To embed these values in the industry, teachers and students at fashion colleges should be making sustainability a priority, not a project, and we as consumers have to embrace this change and support small businesses!

I loved hearing such a variety of insight from people trying to change the fashion industry for the better in very different ways. The second part of the evening was a Q&A session, and I’ll be publishing a second blog post in a couple of weeks to share more from the panel, so stay tuned!