Fashion Redemption: Reversing The Toxic Nature Of The Clothing Industry

Through A Moral Revolution

By Mai Manaloto

When I was a little girl, a sequence of events in my life occurred that would ultimately dictate the course of my life forever. At 5 years old I started playing with paper dolls and enjoyed the constant outfit changes these 2-dimensional illustration provided. Soon after at 6 years old I started sketching my own version of paper dolls with a complete head to toe ensemble for every character. I distributed these designs to my childhood girl friends in the neighborhood for us to indulge during our afternoon play time. About 7 years old the 3-dimensional Barbie doll era began and I just fell in love with her. The dress, figure, hair, heels, make-up, and everything else she represented to me. I would brush her hair, bathe her, dress her, and create storylines for her to reenact but feeding her wasn’t much of a priority during play time to be honest.

What was fascinating for me was how much I wanted her to have a lot of clothing attire and by 8 years old I had plenty of dolls but only fancied one that I thought was the fittest and just took the clothes off the other dolls. I guess, I was loyal to one Barbie and she had a wardrobe derived from the other dolls. Knowing how I wanted to play, I asked my parents to only gift me clothing for Barbie and it was upon this request I found out that the clothing alone for dolls cost more than the doll with attire itself which my parents didn’t find practical. I didn’t get what I wanted – which was just the Barbie clothes by itself, no doll. This event changed my existence because it was at this time I started doing DIY for my favorite doll. I started cutting holes on the edges of a sock shaping a neckline and armholes to create a Barbie dress and it just snowballed from there on. I quickly learned hand sewing and stitching which meant that Barbies’ wardrobe rapidly grew in no time. That’s how I got what I wanted.

In my teenage years, there was abundance in clothing for me to wear and I started getting bored with how generic they looked. I wanted my clothes to have a unique detail that distinguished myself from every other kid which is why I started cutting, altering, and re-designing the clothes I already had. Some were successful ensembles while others became wasted resources. My mother was apprehensive with me cutting high-end designer clothes which she hid away from me, explaining that I was too young to understand what these brands meant. The cheap lines were fair game and with my insatiable appetite to re-work on clothes meant I was granted a portable sewing machine which I cared for so much because to me that machine represented endless design possibilities with a polish output.

I was hooked into the fashion ideology at a young age with all my fashion magazines, books, and films to turn to. It served as a dream life for me but it never occurred to me that I could someday play a role in it. I never thought I had the right resources and connections to enter an industry only reserved for the elite. But I was wrong, for some reason things in my life connected and I’ve managed to enter the fashion industry and stay in it through my own merit. And it’s because of this amount of admiration for what fashion could represent to women like myself, that makes it difficult to admit the dark side of the industry which entails disillusionment and bad practices.

In this discourse I wanted to discuss what is it about the fashion industry worth fighting for and the challenges I found upon taking part in it. The fashion industry is no saint, it’s snobby at best and I am not blind to the devastating effects it is causing the environment and society at large, but I still believe there’s hope for it as it represented hope and aspiration for me when I was younger. Any form of consumerism without care on people and the environment must be overthrown and that’s where the fast fashion trend which promotes disposable clothing is headed if changes are not made. Progress in the fashion industry can be achieved by changing our thoughts when we encounter the terms “slow” and “steady” – terms often associated with a negative connotation such as laziness. This misconception needs to be updated as slow and steady can also mean sustainable. Therefore, a progressive outlook would entail the promotion of slow fashion or steady fashion rather than the oppressive fast fashion. Change would also require enough effort in understanding the whole clothing supply chain and how everything is connected to completely transform the fashion landscape to one of integrity, honour, and moral.

It’s not only the production chain that needs a face lift but also consumer behaviour. As consumers we must understand that cheap is a price we pay for, and often times it translate to another person from a developing nation working over 15 hours a day in an appalling condition paid next to nothing, or worst someone lost their life working in a poorly built production building that collapsed (a tribute to the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh, killing 1,143 lives in 2013) – a company that offered the best unit cost per item. Only in the manufacturing arena where what’s best meant cheap. Our fleeting excitement and entertainment from attaining cheap fashion goods end up in the bin or collecting dust in the wardrobe. In these modern times we live in, how does our privileged shopping habits justify the way another person from a less privileged background make a distinctly disadvantaged way of living?

The fashion industry is crying out for good governance or a moral revolution to put things in reverse and slowly rebuilt its system. It’s no secret this sector presents pressing global problems such as exploitation of workers, faulty infrastructures, inadequate working conditions, human rights violation, overproduction, overconsumption, water and land pollution, and large-scale carbon footprint on the planet. These are very serious complications, and we can’t keep shopping knowing this is the reality of the world we live in. It is a very tricky subject to question considering millions of people depend on this industry for their livelihood. Nevertheless, shutting down the fashion industry is not the solution and will only open new problematic avenues.

The first layer of the supply chain is the garment production spectrum which is often outsourced in developing countries where labour cost and raw material is at a fraction of the cost compared to developed nations making these areas very attractive for businesses. Not to mention there are fewer regulations in developing countries therefore the reality of worker exploitation, poor work environments, pollution, and other environmental devastation is quite common. A deeper breakdown of the production supply chain is a discourse on materials, assembly line, and delivery. When we speak of raw materials and the treatment of it, the truth is it takes great amounts of water, chemicals, crops, and oil to produce a garment. The assembly line, which is compose of pattern development, tracing, marking, cutting, sewing, trimming, quality check, and packaging would require effort and precision from workers, investment in technologies and machines, and plenty of overhead cost such as electricity, rent, wages, and so on. Getting these goods transported (most often) via boat in bulk to retailers for them to stock and then deliver to their customer produces carbon emission on a global scale.

The second layer is the consumption of clothing with a focus on the soft sell side of the business through campaigns. Marketing and advertisement play a pivotal role in ensuring each collection rolled out is a success bringing in sales and margins for the brand. It is always the business of the fashion industry to make us want to purchase more clothes which is why designers are always coming up with new collection in shorter span of time. A new collection means the old collection is no longer on trend, and the fashion industry has a method of making its followers stay on trend by collaborating with influencers and celebrities to dictate what is the prevailing style. Further fuelling fast fashion habits that promotes clothing to end up in landfills. At the moment the world already has a lot of clothes, and it doesn’t need more new collection that ends up resting in warehouses and stockrooms waiting to be purchased or collecting dust in our wardrobe.

The third layer is the disposal system of clothing which has two main categories either reuse or recycle, and then two sub domains under recycling either biological cycle or industrial cycle. Clothing donation would fall under recycling however the veracity concerning recycling is that very little of clothes are salvage. This is the case since clothing is made up of complex blended material such as cotton, polyester, viscose, wool, silk, linen, etc. Clothing and recycling effort is a difficult undertaking because of the mixing of fibres (60% cotton, 40% Polyester) but these blending are necessary to make the garment stronger or of friendlier quality for example combining a natural fibre with a synthetic material makes the garment better for washing because it dries fast and therefore holds less bacteria – natural fibres tend to absorb moisture while synthetic dries quicker.

Furthermore, it is a controversial subject matter to fully go for all organic with raw materials due the amount of resources required to produce a natural fibre. For instance, synthetic fibres are used for clothing because they are durable, cheaper, flexible, versatile, lightweight, wrinkle resistance, and dries quickly but it could take up to 20 years or more for them to decompose. Subsequently you have an organic fibre such as cotton which is soft, breathable, and biodegradable, but it’s not a strong material, has poor elasticity, flammable, shrinks and bombarded with mildew. Cotton also uses large amount of chemicals (fertilizer and pesticides) in its cultivation which ends up in soil and water. Cotton is also known as a water-intensive crop which leaves a water footprint with an average of 10,000 litres to 1kg.

On one end you have a biodegradable material, but inferior in quality that consumes a lot of resources to produce, and another with the exact opposite characteristic. Therefore, it is recommended to mix both organic and synthetic material together to combine the best quality of each other and subside the negative side effect. Slow fashion is really the best antidote to the devastating effect of fast fashion – reusing clothes, shopping sensibly for fewer quality garments, supporting fairtrade brands, taking care of clothes for long lifespan and passing them on is the best way to go. Biological cycle pertains to the return of product to nature harmlessly therefore it demonstrate biodegradable feature. While the industrial cycle points to recycling the non-biodegradable material by remelting the plastic and turning it to wither polyester or acrylic textile. Reworking on existing apparels and adding modern flare is another noble approach in recycling non-biodegradable materials. Personally, I highly encourage fashion designers to pursue this form of creative strategy.

There has been a lot of contemplation on the fashion supply chain for the past decade, as a result designers and entrepreneurs are continuously finding solutions to make the industry good. An industry not only interested in the superficial, but also with substance and a voice for positive change. Many businesses and consumers are turning their head away from the old ways of fast fashion and embracing a more sustainable approach that is slow fashion, where the currently philosophy taking over is the Cradle-to-cradle design approach or regenerative design. C2C model promotes biomimetic approach to product design that would fit human activities to circulate with natures natural ways.

It’s never too late to turn things around in the frivolous landscape of the fashion realm, it’s not an easy process but us consumers would make the biggest change in this industry. It’s up to us to keep our moral ground on check when we shop – understanding that cheap isn’t always the way to go, keep and reuse valuable clothes, take special care of garments to make them last a life time, mend them if broken and don’t just throw them away, and support businesses with a cause that promotes positive change. This is how we can truly achieve looking good and feeling good, inside-out.