What is sustainable fashion?
The word sustainable and fashion are often seen as contradictory as the fashion changes for every season, whereas sustainable means to be long-term. However, there is a shared line between sustainability and fashion where they both can come along.
Fashion can be witnessed as a form of art that complements the long-term perspective of sustainability in which it focuses on craftsmanship and the artisanal and is not just restrained to seasonalities.
Sustainable fashion is a part of the slow fashion movement that evolved over the past decades, and the term sustainability is interchangeable with eco-, green-, ethical fashion. The slow fashion movement is usually misinterpreted as contrasting to fast fashion culture, whereas the slow fashion movement majorly focuses on good working conditions, building essential livelihoods for workers and lowering environmental destruction.
What is slow fashion:
Slow fashion is a process in the fashion supply chain that aims to downsize the speed of the production cycle of clothes. Slow fashion also considers various additional elements like respecting workers at the workplace, the environment and animals.
The entire lifecycle of the product from production to the end of usage is considered in slow fashion. The slow fashion supply chain focuses on creating a product that can last several years. Therefore, the product’s quality counts more than the quantity.
The slow fashion movement was started in 2006 by Kate Fletcher. The described principles of slow fashion are a transparent production supply chain system, using the regional community, and making sustainable and sensorial products.
The slow fashion movement sticks to the slow production of clothing and also encourages the consumers to buy vintage or second-hand clothing, redesigning old clothes, and shop from small producers to help them grow.
Why is sustainable fashion needed?
The fashion industry is the world's second-largest industry which plays a significant part in environmental destruction. According to the 2020 report, the fashion industry emits 4% of global greenhouse gases, which is expected to ascend by 2.7% by 2030.
To be accurate, 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions is almost equal to 2.1 billion tonnes, whereas more than 70% of carbon emissions come from upstream activities, especially the production and processing of raw materials (58767). Each phase of sustainable fashion is explained in the next section.