Fashion is finally slowing down
Over the last 10 years, fashion has been growing faster than ever. Fast fashion models have flooded the market with cheap low-quality pieces, making it something to wear a couple of times and then thrown out. The fast-fashion model has been so successful that even high fashion players have been copying the model by creating more and more collections a year and presenting to consumers more pieces than they even need.
It is clear that the corona-crisis has shown the failures in our system, more importantly, it has shown that the fashion industry is somehow of a useless industry. It is not food, it is not health-related. We just want to look good. That is why with factories and stores closed, the industry was one of the most affected by the whole crisis. Instead of turning to despair, the industry is trying to reinvent itself. Brands and entities like the Council of Fashion Designers of America have been inviting the whole industry to rethink the model and slow down.
Fashion production makes up 10% of humanity’s carbon emissions, dries up water sources, and pollutes rivers and streams. But more importantly, 85% of all textiles go to the dump each year. For a couple of years now, the general public has been getting more informed about the negative effects the industry causes to the environment, and this new wave of conscient consumers has been starting to demand changes to big brands. The effects have been shown. Brands like H&M, which once ruled the market, are now in the border of bankruptcy, with storage houses filled with tons of unsold stock. That is why more and more brands are committing to sustainability. Initiatives like renting clothes and using recycled materials or dyes that are not harmful to water are some of the things that the big fast fashion conglomerates are doing to make themselves look more sustainable, but the truth is that if they still present a collection once every couple weeks and produce a stock that will probably end in a landfill, nothing will change.
On May 21, the Council of Fashion Designers of America along with the British Fashion Council signed a letter in which they invited all of the major conglomerates and brands to step down and present at most 2 collections a year.
“For a long time, there have been too many deliveries and too much merchandise generated. With existing inventory stacking up, designers and retailers must also look at the collections cycle and be very strategic about their products and how and when they intend to sell them. There is a clear disconnect from when things arrive in-store to when the customer actually needs them. The delivery cadence should shift closer to the season for which it is intended.”
This is an attempt of making fashion houses more responsible for the collections they present. Not only materials and stock wise, but also creatively, trying to make the product’s shelf life the longest possible.
As a consequence, also Fashion Shows will be limited to the bare minimum. Due to the sanitary crisis, the following Fashion Weeks will be only presented through live streams, no guests invited, not even VIPs, and who knows when fashion shows will come back. But when they come back, they will be limited to 2 per year, condensed in one of the fashion capitals in the world making the attendees fly the least possible, decreasing each individual’s carbon footprint.
These small efforts will set a precedent in the industry that will then be a decision of all the other players to follow or ignore. The fashion industry is rotten to its roots, and for things to change, everyone should be on the same page. From fashion publications that create trends to manufacturers and the sustainable protocols they follow. But for at least, for the first time people are talking about changing things from the inside, which is a good jumpstart.
