by The year 2023 was one of hyper-fast fashion, big price tags (both high and low), and toxic spills of polyester clothing. It was the year the zombie in the room – the sheer volume of clothing we’re producing and buying – took on a life of its own.
The link between fossil fuels and the synthetics in our clothes hit home. “Fossil fashion is at the heart of many of fast fashion’s worst problems: cheap materials, over-reliance on synthetics, a spiraling waste crisis and explosive emissions,” said Fossil Fuel Fashion, a new organization that launched New Climate Week- York in September. , bringing together an alliance of organizations with the aim of phasing fossil fuels out of the industry.
Fossil fuel-based polyester is cheap and the fiber of choice for hyper-fast fashion, which continues to dominate the market, despite a torrent of criticism in June after the leading producer , Shein, paid for six fashion influencers to travel to their factories in China. Then the influencers posted amazing behind-the-scenes reviews and the $66bn fashion brand continues to tempt us into buying clothes we didn’t know we wanted and definitely don’t need. However, the race to the bottom has only just begun. Chinese shopping app Temu, which is giving Shein a run for its money, with its 99% “lightning” discount deals, has been viewed more than 7m times since launching in the UK in April.
But it wasn’t all bad news. The link between farming and fashion has never been more talked about; “Regenerative” is one of the biggest buzzwords of the year. As Safia Minney, the founder of Fashion Declare, who wants a radical change in the industry, explains, farmers not only keep carbon in the soil involved in fashion, but the whole process – from the cotton, hemp, flax, wool and leather cultivation until the end of the garment’s life.
There was one triumph for regenerative fashion in October, when Justine Aldersey-Williams presented the UK’s first indigenous jeans made from flax and woad cultivated on wasteland in Blackburn, Lancashire.
With a few distractions – thank you, Louis Vuitton, for the million-dollar handbag, whose price tag still isn’t enough to justify the Crayola-colored crocodile it’s made of – it was also the year that saw a fresh focus on the the terrible pollution of waste colonialism. In February, The Or Foundation – based in the Kantamanto market in Accra, Ghana, which is dedicated to tackling the injustice of the fashion waste problem – published its report Stop Waste Colonialism. He explained how “the fashion industry uses the global second-hand clothing trade as a de facto waste management strategy”. In May, a group of clothing traders went to Brussels to debate with policy makers about the European legislation on extended producer responsibility (EPR) – to ensure that the Kantamanto market is part of the conversation, because the world’s fashion trash ending up on their doorstep. .
Artist Jeremy Hutchinson took the idea of trash on the doorstep to the next level when he became a “monster of post-consumer imperialism” in the form of a suffocating 8-foot textile zombie called Dead White Man. It was a collaboration with The Or Foundation and was referring to the Ghanaian expression say, meaning the clothes of a dead white man, which is how the market traders of the Kantamanto market refer to their cast stock from the global north. Dead White Man performed at the British Textile Biennale in Blackburn in October and made impromptu visits to his favorite clothing suppliers, including Marks & Spencer, where he was filmed by bemused shoppers while taking the stairs to the lingerie department. M&S is one of the brands whose labels are often used on the beaches of Accra.
In September, Clare Press, the Sydney-based founder of the Wardrobe Crisis podcast, essential listening for anyone interested in sustainable fashion, published her latest book, Wear Next: Fashioning the Future, exploring some of the solutions to many of these problems. “Overproduction and hyperspeed are two of the biggest problems facing the fashion industry,” she says. In its annual Fashion Transparency Index, Fashion Revolution reported that 88% of major fashion brands still do not disclose their annual production numbers. According to the Index, worldwide there is enough clothing in the system to clothe the next six generations of people (unless the planet breaks down before then).
But this was also the year that European legislation began to dig in to regulate fast fashion. In December, the European Parliament agreed to ban the destruction of unsold clothing, accessories and footwear as part of its new “eco-design” framework, which will also give clothes a Digital Product Passport. Expected to come into effect in 2026, the QR code will give shoppers more transparency about materials, manufacturing and even tips on how to repair their item. Without regulation, brands are still not taking responsibility for their products, the materials they use and their supply chains. Legislation will begin to push them to take joint action.
This year has also seen the continued exploitation of garment workers around the world. 2023 marked 10 years since the Rana Plaza factory disaster that killed 1,134 people and injured at least 2,000 more when the factory collapsed in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In December, more than 50 brands signed up to the newly extended International Agreement, contributing to safer working conditions for more than 2 million garment factory workers in Bangladesh, with 48 signing to the Bangladesh Safety Agreement and 88 for the latest Pakistan. Agreement.
But there is always a lack of transparency. In November, a woman in Derbyshire found a Chinese prisoner’s ID card in the sleeve lining of her Regatta coat, raising warnings about modern slavery hidden in supply chains. And poverty wages are still the norm in the industry. As reported by the Clean Clothes Campaign, on June 25 this year union leader Shahidul Islam was executed for labor rights action in Tongi, Bangladesh. Continued protests against the new minimum wage in Bangladesh led to the death of four workers in November, and the imprisonment of at least 115 workers and trade unionists. According to Maeve Galvin, Fashion Revolution’s director of global campaigns and policy, “we are so far from workers achieving social justice that it is shameful.”
On a more optimistic note, young people are continuing to buy their clothes second-hand, online or at car boot sales. Fast fashion brands see Depop, Vinted and eBay as their biggest competitors and have started to turn over valuable retail space to second-hand clothing. As Press in Wear Next points out, while fashion consumption increases, we’re also seeing the parallel rise of the slow fashion movement with the repair revolution (including repair and alteration apps like Sojo and The Seam ) and DIY fashion continues to evolve. Now that’s progress.
