Contents: Seven pairs of $7 shoes -- "I have enough clothing to open a store" -- How America lost its shirts -- High and low fashion make friends -- Fast fashion -- The afterlife of cheap clothes -- Sewing is a good job, a great job -- China and the end of cheap fashion -- Make, alter, and mend -- The future of fashion.
Whether your goal is to build an effortless capsule wardrobe, keep up with trends without harming the environment, buy better quality, seek out ethical brands ,or all of the above, The Conscious Closet is packed with the vital tools you need.
The clothing industry churns out 80 billion garments a year and employs every sixth person on Earth. Historically, the apparel trade has exploited labor, the environment, and intellectual property|and in the last three decades, with the simultaneous unfurling of fast fashion, globalization, and the tech revolution, those abuses have multiplied exponentially, primarily out of view. We are in dire need of an entirely new human-scale model.
Fast Fashion: the Real Price of Low Cost Fashion
Collective Eye Films; 2021
The planet is being overwhelmed with clothes. Close to 56 million tonnes of clothes are sold every year. In Europe, the amount purchased has almost doubled since the year 2000. Thanks to fast disposable fashion, you can constantly renew your wardrobe. But producing clothes at such a low price has a very high environmental cost. Textiles are the second most polluting industry in the world, after oil. According to the brands, they no longer have time to create. To satisfy an insatiable consumer appetite, copying the competitionâ‚‚s models makes things go faster and cheaper even if it means risking a court case now and then.
As our climate, ecological and social crises converge, urgent action is needed to maximize our chances of survival. A new commercial approach is possible but it requires a systemic shift, with companies learning to operate as part of a wider 'ecosystem', allowing fashion to restore what it has taken.
