This morning BOF (Business of Fashion) posted an article titled "These Designers Want to Fight Climate Change. Just Don't Call Them 'Sustainable". If you aren't able to read the article BOF offers free access to their articles for students they also have a great career section for students looking for internship so be sure to sign up so you can read all their articles!
This article details how billion dollar brands are now using the word "Sustainable" as a marketing tool and not actually pushing the addressing the real issues in the fast fashion industry. As a marketing major myself it got me thinking is sustainability the new trend or are these brands really doing their part.
America is a consumer driven market. I argue that we buy clothes more often here than anywhere else. Its apart of the culture here that as soon as we see something new we have to have it . In the article they talk about how smaller brands have been fighting climate change since their start and that if they could do it on such small budgets why haven't these billion dollar brands been doing this from the beginning.
They also argue whether or not anyone is actually fact checking these brands to see if they really are doing what they say.“No one is fact-checking,” said Hillary Taymour, the designer behind Collina Strada, a New York-based contemporary brand known for its tie-dye garments. “There needs to be regulation in place where you need documents to prove that something is actually cleaner — maybe a certified stamp.”
“Any brand that is saying ‘here is a sustainable product,’ and is trying to make people buy things that they don’t need is disingenuous,” said Liz Ricketts, a sustainability advocate and professor at the University of Cincinnati. Which leads to the argument of whether or not we are buying "sustainable fashion" because it's the new trend or because we actually care about climate change.
Here are some of my favorite brands that focus on sustainability and ethically produced fast fashion and I hope you can support them because change is important in this industry. Also I listed a new popular website called thread up which is trying to reduce consumption of goods by providing a space for shoppers and brands to sell their clothes and extra inventory.
I hope this discussion of sustainability and marketing was interesting and made you think about the industry because its definitely something I am still thinking about.
