“Fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics.” George Bernard Shaw 1906
According to Georg Simmel in The American journal of sociology, “Fashion is a form of imitation which differentiates on time from another and one social stratum from another, it unites those from a social class and segregates them from others…”
For me, is mostly about personal communication or identity, it is a way to express ourselves not only for us as designers but also for the people who wear our creations, it defines who we are on so many different levels. The most accurate definition I would agree with is what Orsola de Castro fashion designer said in the true cost documentary:
Fashion is our chosen skin!
I remember when I decided to study fashion, it was all about self-expression, now as my career develops, now that I’m older and more aware of what the world is, and now that I have more sense of what the fashion industry involves, and now that I find myself guiding the future talents of fashion, I think it could be used to do more than expressing who you are; and if Simmel is right we should be differentiating our times by doing good to our world that needs it desperately, I believe we can do good through our values that define our identity, unfortunately in our today world where everything is ruled by consumerism we must accept the fact that everything in consumerist reality has become an extension of our identity, and it is sad to realize that few people are the ones who dictate how should our identity be.
As Steve Oklyn critic of the fashion industry and founder of NOT VOGUE, says:
The absence of meaning and absence of purpose are the dominant building blocks of the global consumer network.
As we know it by now that is how fashion works, fashion creates, in general, this emptiness, and as a consequence, we feel the need to consume again and again to get rid of that emptiness, but of course, it never goes away, so we keep consuming.
Some could agree with the thought that regards fashion as unnecessary corrupt and meaningless, even Forbes the business magazine declared that fashion designers have one of the most unimportant jobs with zero positive impact on the world, but it is simply untrue and I refuse to believe that all fashion is superficial and meaningless.
What changed everything?
The fashion industry indeed has been reinvented and one of the main reasons as we all know is FAST FASHION.
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It wasn’t until prêt-à-porter when the process of creating fashion picked a little bit of speed, and the designer-maker process became less exclusive. Exclusivity was preserved in the level of design but the manufacturing process became more industrialized. But it wasn’t until brands like H&M, Zara, Forever 21 that started selling clothes with similar catwalk styles at a super high speed when the way fashion was sold was completely changed, and the way it was produced changed, even more, fashion houses end up with tons of collections because they should respond to fast-changing fashion trends which now change in weeks instead of months.
It seems as if the big fashion industries are teaching us how to buy, what to buy, and when to buy it …
But fast fashion is not only about shopping more than ever and having more clothes than we used to have a long time ago, but it is also about what it is doing not only to us as human beings but to our world.
The textile industry is one of the biggest water consumers in the world, using 3.2 % of all the 1,400km of water available to the human race each year; and fast fashion causes this amount to rapidly increase.
Add to these millions of tons of coal, the land and waterways lost to pollution from pesticides and dyeing and finishing fabrics, and what about the extras that our clothes demand, millions of meters of labels, elastic strings, zippers, metal buttons, and even the plastic bags where they are transported.
Imagine all the acid dye baths and the power needed for drying fabric under huge electric lamps, and the millions of tons of pumice stone in giants washers needed to get the right fashion effects on leather or denim.
The researchers suggest that each one of us is indirectly responsible for generating 0.6 kilograms of oil, sixty kilograms of water per kilogram, and one kilogram of solid waste per kilogram of fashion we buy. With our yearly average of fifty-five kilograms of textile, that makes thirty-three kilograms of oil, 3,300 kilograms of water, and fifty-five kilograms of waste in total FOR EVERY ONE OF US!
The devastating environmental damage is just one of the ugly sides hidden in the fashion closet, but there is also social injustice.
The other day I was standing waiting for the elevator wearing this crop jacket that I love which had an embroidery detail on the shoulders. My boyfriend was looking at it intriguingly. I have to say I bought the jacket in a fast fashion retail store at a very cheap price and because my boyfriend innocently thought I knew everything about fashion, he asked me: How do they make that? do they have special sewing machines that do that? I replied sure of myself: of course not, this is handmade! (It certainly didn’t look like machine embroidery); he answers, but how can people make millions of this? they must have a special machine to do them… I just didn’t know what to say, and this got me thinking a lot, and more questions came up! if it’s indeed made by people, how many people do they need to make them? where do they fit all of these people? if this jacket was so cheap how much are they paying them? After researching I finally realized it is indeed people who do these millions of embroideries, by hand!
You don’t want to believe it was made by a pair of hands because we prefer to believe that our clothes were produced by a fully automated industry and this shows how much we decide to close our eyes and just don’t want to see the horrible side of fashion, most of the people are unaware of the processes, the system and the impact involved in the creation of a piece of clothing, it is fundamental to understand the whole fashion chain, to understand that we are not just buying cloth, textiles or clothes, we become part of the whole fashion system, that involves values and relationships.
Globalized production
Globalized production means all of the making of goods its been outsourced to low-cost economies, where wages are kept low, and of course, those on the top are the ones who choose where to make it.
The reality of this industry is that in developing countries working long hours under strenuous conditions for little money is normal.
Of course, we as designers can be tired of a day spent hunched over a sewing machine or on the computer doing rendering, but at the end of the day, we can go to the comfort of our homes, fall back and enjoy the principles of human rights, all of these privileges that the average garment worker can only dream of.
It wasn’t until the Rana Plaza incident where 117 people died that the fashion industry started re-thinking things and we as consumers finally turned heads, this wasn’t the only incident that happened though, but by far the biggest one and it is really sad and honestly unfair that it’s until something really bad happens that we start caring, but it is even sadder that a lot of fashion industries haven’t done much to fix all of these problems (care and compassion cost money). They put all of their efforts into having their reputation mend with their public relations team that is waiting in the back, instead of focusing on the core problems.
It is indeed cheaper to be sorry than to be safe right?
Revolution of values
Let’s face it, there is no such thing as fashion without a footprint! there will not be, at least for a couple of hundred years…
We all have to take responsibility; As designers, we should know how our garments are produced, we should be creating things full of integrity that last longer, we should be designing according to our values and in this way, we will definitely stand out…
As consumers we need to start questioning consumption and stop applauding money, stop celebrating good business because of the amount of money they make, and start celebrating good business because of the number of things they do to help the world.
Most of all I think is all about EDUCATION. From knowledge comes care, how would people know they are making the right decision if they don’t know what options they have, how will designer create things that will benefit the world if they don’t even know how to, we need to start educating people on what they can do.
It’s not the same anymore…
Fashion has changed! Fashion is losing the forceful creative innovation that it once did, but there still is something we can do to change this. We certainly need a fashion revolution not only to allow everyone to have and to create their own identity but to create an identity that defines who we are in the world we live in and what we want from it.
So do we want a world ruled by environmental and social impacts? things that in the future will destroy our world? I think there are different types of ways of living life, and the most fulfilling would be living a life morally good, in a documentary I recently saw called happy, based on countless studies, true happiness is dictated more than anything in the way you choose to live your life; compassion caring and love are what we call spiritual emotions, which make you seek different things apart from yourself if you only search for your own happiness (which in a way we could say fashion is all about) it is selfish, but once we focus on these spiritual emotions and worry more about the well-being of the world, your life transcends and you start caring about something bigger than yourself, this is when we can start becoming what scientist call: Truly happy.
So we need to let people know the true cost of the current fashion business dictated by multinational business with the sole aim of making money for shareholders. We should use the power we have as designers to inspire a permanent change in the fashion industry and fix all the broken parts of the supply chain, and why not to become truly happy:)
Directora de la carrera de DISEÑO Y NEGOCIOS DE LA MODA
“Creative and artistic mind aiming to inspire people through fashion in every media, creating connections, innovation and creativity through creations”.