The Suppose, in theory, sustainable fashion doesn’t have to have a single look. After all, surely the whole point of prioritizing ethics over aesthetics is that clothing design shouldn’t be all about how they look, but how they’re made: the raw materials used, the industrial processes performed, people employed, carbon footprint. of transport. But in reality, she has a look. You can’t take aesthetics out of fashion. Sustainable fashion also has style rules. Just different.
Some of these are simple practices. Sequins, being mostly made from non-biodegradable fabric, are a no-no for environmental reasons. If you embellish a T-shirt with decorative chains or embellish it with beads or attached trim, you will make it much more difficult for the fabric to be recycled or reused in a beneficial way. Therefore, simple design is favored. Textile dyeing is one of the most water-intensive elements of the garment production cycle, so bright colors can be a red flag.
A lot of baggage is layered into our idea of what sustainable fashion looks like: thick, rough fabrics that look wetter, less industrial, than shiny ones, whether they are or not; bamboo, birds, waves and other prints and patterns that celebrate nature; loose silhouettes, to avoid semaphore personal vanity; raw edges and textures to ditch problematic levels of bling.
But that is changing. With circularity now a cornerstone of key sustainability strategies, consumers and brands are looking at clothes through a new lens. Circulation is focusing attention on the longevity of a garment’s appeal and its value in the future resale market. It’s a radical departure for the value system of an industry that has historically hero-worshipped new clothes—preferably with tags and wrapped in beanies—and tended to dismiss as irrelevant to the fashion conversation any clothes that have already been worn. . .
A 10-year program for industrial change, for which the government has pledged £80m in funding, is focused on “creating a world-leading circular fashion ecosystem in the UK”, according to the British Fashion Council (BFC). Announcing the scheme in Downing Street, Stephanie Phair, chairman of the BFC, set out a vision of “a city like Leeds, which has a rich history in manufacturing and textiles, maintaining its role as a key part of the fashion and industry of textile and an example of a circular city with recycling plants and high energy streets with return schemes”.
Meanwhile, Love Island set the tone for a summer of resale with sponsorship from eBay as clothing provider for the series, and Dr Martens partnered with fashion app Depop to provide a sales platform for refurbished shoes. With the resale market said to be growing 11 times faster than traditional retail, according to a global report conducted by Thredup, brands including Valentino and Gucci are looking to partner with customers who have last season’s pieces in their wardrobes. them through proven purchase schemes.
Circulation is far from a magic bullet for the fashion industry’s environmental problems; Rental firms have faced criticism for the impact of shipping and cleaning involved when a dress is shuffled from one holder to another every few days. But the most fundamental issue with circulation, from a sustainability point of view, is also its greatest flaw and its greatest asset: that is, circularity does not try to stop fashion consumers from buying. Faced with the scale of the climate emergency, many activists believe that any policy that caters to our desire to buy feeds the problem. But others say that by providing a scratch to the itch to buy, circularity offers a roadmap that consumers and brands can actually be persuaded to follow.
While the environmental impact of fashion’s new focus on pre-worn clothing may be less than transparent, the impact on how we want to dress is clear. It is also dramatically different from the stereotypes that have persisted around ethical fashion. The most desirable clothes now are the ones that will still look desirable five years from now. This means dresses in black and white, and not in any color of the season.
In other words, the most radical statement you can make with your outfit is to signal that you have chosen it not on the whim of the fashion moment, but with the intention of ensuring that it has a long and working life, in your . wardrobe or someone else’s.
This week, the September issues of glossy magazines hit newsstands, with their big reveal of the season’s new look. Key pieces for next fall? White cotton shirts, tailored pantsuits, knit jersey dresses, black biker boots, tan leather belts and gold chain necklaces. The trends are so last season; eternity is hot now.
Ralph Lauren, which has built a luxury empire not on setting trends but on an enduring vision of timeless Manhattan style, is one of a number of well-known brands that now find themselves at the cutting edge of fashion. Its preppy classics of the 1980s and proto-streetwear of the 1990s are highly regarded by Gen Z consumers, who have made the brand one of the most sought-after names in fashion favorites. Devon Leahy, head of sustainability at Ralph Lauren, recently told Vogue Business that “timeless design” was the key to sustainability, because of its power to future-proof the desirability of the clothes being made. Leahy sees a scaling-up of turnover, which is likely to include brands receiving a percentage of resale profits in exchange for certification, as an important step towards sharing financial growth where businesses are still supported by heavy manufacturing carbon footprints of new clothes.
The most advanced fashion of the moment does not seem radical at all. The establishment classics are the new avant-garde, because the aspirational image most connected to the zeitgeist is one that doesn’t follow a trend cycle. From jeans and rugged biker boots to striped cotton shirts and simple tailoring, from cotton dresses to gabardine raincoats, timeless is back in the hot seat. The new look? Old school classics, played over and over again.
