Where is the system change in the fashion industry?

While reading the Dutch book ‘De mens is een plofkip’ ('Humans are battery chickens'), in which writer and journalist Teun van de Keuken takes a closer look at the food industry, I was repeatedly reminded of the fashion sector. Van de Keuken argues that it is almost impossible to escape the (ultra) processed food that is constantly being thrust upon us. “Healthy food can’t compete. It’s more expensive, there’s less advertising for it, it’s available in fewer places and it’s not nearly as easy or tasty as the sugar-salt-fat snacks that you can gobble down without chewing,” wrote the author.

A parallel with the fashion sector: consumers want to shop more sustainably, but most fashion items that are marketed to us are garments that are generally not produced with consideration for people and the environment. It’s no surprise that the latter still sells the most (for example, Inditex, the owner of Zara, is one of the richest and most powerful fashion companies in the world).

In his book, Van de Keuken dismisses the argument of companies that justify the production and sale of unhealthy or unethical products by claiming that they are simply meeting the perceived demand from consumers, based on purchasing behaviour.

He calls it nonsense. “Consumers may choose certain products like clothing and chocolate, but they don’t consciously choose the abuses that go hand in hand with their production. If only because they don’t have enough knowledge of the production methods. Also, there aren’t always alternatives that are produced in a clean way. Moreover, if you offer people beautiful, tasty, cheap goods, it’s logical that they want them,” argued Van de Keuken.

Fast fashion - as in: fun, cheap trend clothing - is all the rage on the high street and is just as readily offered, or even forced upon us, in online environments. Think of advertising from the larger platforms on the internet and social media, or consider the questionable practices of Chinese giants. Temu for example, has been accused of using so-called dark patterns, forbidden techniques that manipulate consumers).

You could argue that the entire fashion industry - with the exception of a few - has become fast fashion. And by that I refer to an alternate meaning of fast fashion: as in ‘rapidly changing collections’. In 2013, my fellow journalist Don-Alvin Adegeest wrote ‘Fashion at breakneck speed?’. The title is still relevant in 2024, and you can remove the question mark. Ten new collections per year, weekly or even daily new fashion items on the shelves is commonplace, not only at so-called fast fashion companies like Zara and Shein, but also at luxury brands like Dior or Chanel and all price levels in between.

The reason sustainable fashion (clothing made with consideration for people and the environment) is not yet mainstream is because fast fashion dominates the fashion industry

Sustainable clothing is less ubiquitous, harder to find (because there’s less money for prominent shop fronts and advertising, to name but a few) and generally more expensive. Whereas if we were to calculate the damage of products back to the manufacturers, they would have a very different price, as Van de Keuken pointed out in his book. True Pricing is what it’s called. If we were to apply this to the fashion industry, clothing that is produced responsibly would become cheaper and fashion for which people are exploited and/or the environment is damaged would become more expensive.

Van de Keuken argued that we have a system in which the environmental and health costs of the food industry are passed on to society. “The pain points of processed food are now scientifically well documented,” he stated. And he added: “If the system doesn’t work, it’s time to change the system.”

In the fashion sector too, the urgent need for sustainability has been evident for decades. Year after year, both the importance and the urgency of this topic are growing, as evidenced by publications, media attention and discussions about it, both inside and outside the fashion industry.

Some dark sides of the fashion industry: unfair wages for people who put our clothes together on the other side of the world, poor working conditions in textile factories and harmful dyes that are discharged into the water around the factories with all the consequences that entails. Also think of the growing mountain of clothing waste, much made of unsold garments that go straight to the incinerator or disappear only to later reappear - just think of the images of the ‘clothing desert’ in Chile.

How wonderful it would be if clothing not only made us look better and feel better (on the surface), but was also actually beautifully made. Sustainable fashion must become the norm.

Today, countless people and pioneers are working on a more sustainable fashion industry. For example, innovative materials are being invented to make clothes, there are innovative sustainable fashion designers and entrepreneurs such as Joline Jolink (who is setting up a regenerative company: to make a garment from her own land) or The New Optimist (a Dutch brand committed to circularity by selling clothing with a deposit), and professionals who are scaling up textile-to-textile recycling or repair in the sector. There are also many (non-profit) organisations that are fighting for better working conditions or a living wage and sustainability experts who help companies transition to greener practices.

But at the same time, sustainable fashion is still ‘only’ a segment on the trade show floor, just as there is only a ‘green’ rack of clothing in fashion stores.
In other words: The fashion industry has not yet fundamentally changed - and still operates, for the most part, traditionally: there is a longer supply chain, for example, meaning the sector is not fast nor flexible and fashion cannot react quickly to changes in the market (this became painfully clear during the corona pandemic). The fashion calendar is sometimes seen by fashion professionals as a curse and there has been dissatisfaction for years about the sale culture.

It made me wonder: What then is needed for that radical shift?

Van de Keuken wrote in his book that more legislation is needed to enforce a healthier food environment. There need to be rules for the food that companies make. “The government has a duty of care to its citizens and must make laws and enforce rules that keep them healthy,” he argued.

Now, more sustainable legislation and regulations are finally in the pipeline for the fashion industry, something that sustainable experts have been advocating for years. For example, there will be a tougher approach to greenwashing, a strong stimulus for more traceability through the introduction of digital product passports, mandatory sustainability reporting for companies in the form of the CSRD and a directive that forces organisations to address abuses in the area of the environment and people in the supply chain, the CSDDD.

But regulation alone is not going to bring about a system change, so the - justified - criticism continues. It doesn’t really force companies to address the core of their business. “Real sustainability news would be if companies were to drastically reduce their production numbers,” Simone Preuss, a journalist for FashionUnited with expertise in sustainability, recently told me.

Now, the sustainability efforts of companies are often a drop in the ocean or there is greenwashing. After all, the business model of the companies that communicate about their green efforts is usually at odds with sustainability: making money from selling new stuff and continuously pushing new fashion items to the consumer.

Fashion companies are businesses and at the boardroom table - at least for the large-scale, listed companies - it’s all about growing sales and profit figures. Van de Keuken put it this way: “Companies are primarily on earth to make their profits and shareholders happy.” Clothing brands often have their products made as cheaply as possible, because then the margin is the greatest. And this applies just as well to luxury companies. You may recall the recent headlines and police investigation in Italy that revealed that Dior paid only 57 dollars for the production of luxury bags that sell for 2,780 dollars, indicating exploitative labour practices at its suppliers. Or that Bloomberg revealed earlier this year that Loro Piana, the brand from the LVMH portfolio that sells luxurious vicuña sweaters for a retail price of 9,000 dollars, paid wool farmers from the indigenous Lucanas community in Peru only a pittance (and the village still lives largely in poverty).

How do we tackle it then? Time for collective action?!

Van de Keuken addressed not only our policymakers and the companies in his book, but above all ‘the collective’. “So it’s mainly something that we, society, have to get to grips with,” he believed. “Not as individuals who are responsible for our own food and our own well-being, we have to free ourselves from that fabrication of the industry, but as a collective, as a society. Because we are not primarily consumers, but citizens (..)”

Van de Keuken’s call also immediately reminded me of the book and movement ‘Moral Ambition’ by Rutger Bregman of the Dutch journalism platform, De Correspondent. Bregman explained moral ambition as ‘the will to drastically improve the world’. “To dedicate your career to the big problems of our time (..) It is the desire to make a difference and leave something behind that really matters,” he wrote in his book. His message to the reader: make your ideals work.

What if more people from the fashion sector, and especially those who still work in ‘mainstream fashion’ (or are still studying), were to put their heads together? What if the talented professionals who are now - to use Bregman’s words - putting their talent into not such useful or even harmful companies were to use it for a sustainable fashion industry?

Would we then arrive at a fashion sector where clothing is (again) worn with love, until T-shirts are worn to shreds? Where clothing is made exclusively for its wearer, only when necessary: on order and completely bespoke. Where people receive a fair, or better yet, a good wage for the (hand)work they do. Where we make clothes from sustainable fibres and raw materials, we dye with natural dyes that do not harm the environment and clothing eventually ‘can go back into the ground’ and serve as a raw material for new fibres. Where we care for nature, local communities and keep the world healthy or restore it for future generations, so that they reap the benefits of our achievements, instead of struggling with the consequences of the depletion and pollution of the earth and its resources.

Of course, I’m making a classic mistake here. Henry Ford, who developed the car and revolutionised the transport industry, put it this way: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” True progress sometimes requires us to think outside conventional expectations and limitations to create truly innovative products and ideas. As such, I can’t wait to see what a more sustainable future looks like for the fashion industry. Bring on the revolution.

Finally: Bregman urged the readers of his book to take action themselves (‘not to blame others’). “If you succeed in doing that, and you choose the path of moral ambition, then the ripple effect can be enormous. Precisely because your behaviour is contagious, a better world does indeed start with yourself,” Bregman said.

‌

Sources

• The book ‘De mens is een plofkip, hoe de voedingsindustrie ons ziek maakt’ ('Humans are battery chickens, how the food industry makes us sick') by Teun van de Keuken, published by Thomas Rap, April 2024. Passages from the book are included here with permission.

• The book ‘Moral Ambition’ by Rutger Bregman of De Correspondent, March 2024.

• Recent conversations with journalist Simone Preuss and fashion professional Stijntje Jaspers of Stichting Fibershed Nederland about and for already published background articles.

• Business Insider article ‘Now we know how much it costs to make a $2,800 Dior bag’ by Shubhangi Goel, July 3, 2024.

• Bloomberg The Big take article ‘Loro Piana’s $9,000 Sweaters Rely on Unpaid Farmers in Peru’ by By Marcelo Rochabrun, March 13, 2024.

• The newsletter ‘Destroy your t-shirts’ by fashion consultant Alec Leach, July 11, 2024.

• Articles from the FashionUnited archive by Simone Preuss and Don-Alvin Adegeest, among others.

This article was originally published on FashionUnited.NL and subsequently translated and edited into English.