The Future of Sustainable Fashion: Trends and Innovations
Contrary to its association of opulent catwalks and artistic creations, fashion is an industry and consumer of materials, and is sometimes said to contribute as much as 20 per cent of all industrialised untreated wastewater. As climate change and ecosystem damage continue unabated, the future of fashion is one that it will have to make its own – a future in which we will be seeing a lot more of the developments and innovation detailed here in a style that is insightful, lively, and frank.
The Rise of Sustainable Materials
The most obvious development is in regard to raw materials. The manufacture of materials like cotton or polyester is hugely harmful to the environment. The production of cotton is both water-intensive and pesticide-intensive. Organic cotton, hemp and bamboo are some examples of alternative, more eco-friendly materials.
Organically grown cotton is free of synthetic pesticides and fertilisers and therefore has a far smaller environmental footprint. The leafy plant hemp is a versatile hardy crop that should be a favourite with ecologically minded designers because it’s pretty, fast-growing and doesn’t require pesticides or copious amounts of water. Bamboo is pretty much one of nature’s gifts to clothing, being both soft and silky to touch and biodegradable, not to mention super-fast growing. Better still, new technologies in textiles are allowing it to be crafted into ever more plush luxuries.
Another new material is piñatex, created from leftover pineapple leaves – where pineapples’ inner surface gets a second life, so do the waste leaves, giving farmers a second stream of income, and a bit of strangeness – pineapples’ skin are slightly bitter – sopiestaste.com/food/top-10-bitter-substitutesAnother remarkable material is leather made from mycelium, a creative new process, fully biodegradable and, of course, cruelty-free. Piñatex and mushroom leather both are products made with a material that would otherwise be wasted, and they fit into a new business logic, a circular one, where reuse is becoming a fundamental part of the life cycle of material products.
Technological Innovations
At the core of this new world are new technologies, which I’ve especially enjoyed learning about. My favourites are within the realm of biofabrication – or cellular agriculture, which is the bio-manufacturing of textiles. For instance, a Californian start-up called Bolt Threads makes bioengineered spider silk, or spider silk that’s manufactured by spiders. There’s currently no synthetic spider silk yet produced, because polymer chemists thus far haven’t managed to duplicate naturally occurring spider silk in a lab. Instead, the fibres are biofabricated through something like fermentation, which means that sugar and water are brewed inside yeast, which subsequently spin sugars into silk proteins, winding them together into fibres that look like this.
Another technological transformation making sustainable fashion possible is 3D printing. Because it can produce garments on demand rather than in bulk batches or against the season, 3D printing cuts waste. It can also facilitate custom, fit-to-size garments that last longer. However, it’s producing more than mere utilitarian creations: it’s also creatively making beautiful, more complex garments by designers such as Danit Peleg, shown here.
More than that, digital clothes that don’t actually exist in the material world, except as an artefact produced by a computer file, is booming too. Clothes worn on avatars, visible on social media and in immersive games and other online spaces are produced neither in clothing factories nor with chemicals. Digital clothes – precisely the kind of thing DressX claims to deliver – produce very little, if any, carbon in the atmosphere.
Ethical Production and Fair Trade
This is not just a question of sustainable materials and technological innovation, but ethical production and fair payment for workers. Exploitative labour in clothing manufacturing in developing countries has long been the swapra industry’s open secret. Increasingly, that is changing. There is rising pressure towards transparency.
Patagonia and Everlane (to name but two of many brands) are both posting detailed maps of their supply chains, and are paying their workers decent wages and providing safe working conditions. There are many such fair-trade certifications but one of the best known is Fair Trade International.
Furthermore, the local production of artisanal goods has also experienced a revival, as people who buy from local artisans and small-scale producers save some traditional crafts from their extinction, keep transport costs and distances low, and create identity and local roots, which can be seen as an important component of the green life.
Consumer Behaviour and Education
In this sense, the future of sustainable fashion lies in consumer behaviour and consumer education. As we become more aware of environmental issues, our purchasing behavior changes – we become more picky. In parallel fashion, our growing concerns about the environment foster the rise of the conscious consumer. The demand for sustainable and ethical clothing, as well as new beautiful products, is driven by this new consumer.
The ‘Who Made My Clothes?’ campaign, organised by Fashion Revolution This increasing consumer awareness and knowledge is leading to a change in attitudes: work being done through education schemes such as Fashion Revolution’s ‘Who Made My Clothes?’ campaign is helping consumers to ask questions about where their clothes come from, and feed that knowledge into their decision about what to buy.
The Role of Policy and Regulation
Policy and regulation are a vital part of the shift but, with governments and international bodies keen to impose strict regulations on an industry with enormous environmental and social impact, the writing is on the wall. Following the launch of its Circular Economy Action Plan towards the end of last year, the European Union aims to make the most sustainable products the norm across the market in the EU, and reduce textile waste through processes of recycling and reuse.
Furthermore, extended producer responsibility (EPR) is being mandated to place the responsibility on manufacturers to manage the entire lifecycle of their products. With EPR, manufacturers will have to specifically take back and recycle their garments, and that will encourage them to design for longevity and recyclability.
A Personal Perspective
As someone who cut her teeth on fashion, it seems to me – insofar as this is possible with an industry driven by the bottom line – a rather hopeful, if late, initiative. I recall the eventual omnipresence of fast-fashion giants, who once had their stockings in a charming swirl, enticing consumers with an equally chilling ‘hurry, buy our clothes, they’re cheap – and more importantly, stylish, but don’t ask about the wages of those who died making them’.
And I see a new breed of designers and customers beginning to fight the system that has cornered the market for so long. I no longer feel responsible for this fact – this girl does. I’m not predicting peak polyester just yet, but I guess we’ll know when it happens. Not so long ago, I went to a sustainable fashion show where a group of young designers presented collections made entirely from recycled polyester garments. As I watched their parade of originality, joy, colour and texture, I felt buoyed up by hope. Here was fashion demonstrating how to do good.
Conclusion
Sustainable fashion will be stitched together with five threads: innovation, responsibility and even a modicum of hope via new materials and technological solutions; decent production; and finally sustainable consumption. The road ahead leads to greater sobriety, for all of us, from designers to consumers, retailers and finally policymakers. Fashion need not be an abode of guilt. It can continue to be a space of play.
But to do this, a global challenge of keeping the balance between work and play must remain. Without pleasurable playfulness, garments become mere clothes. And good lord, we need lots and lots of clothes. Without more creative, nurturing and playful clothes in our future, we risk losing both the material commons and the mythic power we so desperately need.