There has been a large shift recently in the Fashion Industry towards a desire to create clothing and products that are considered sustainable. These products are made from eco-friendly resources, such as sustainably grown crops or recycled materials. The overall goal of sustainable fashion is to reduce the amount of overproduced fashion, and decreasing the negative environmental impact.
Many believe that the fashion industry has a strong responsibility, and opportunity to create clothing in a way that does not negatively impact the environment. The goal of sustainable fashion is to create systems that increase the value of local production, prolonging the lifecycle of materials, and reducing the amount of waste and harm to the environment.
One of the biggest reasons for this need and desire to shift to sustainable fashion is the increasing stream of “fast fashion”, which has become the popular term for cheap, and constantly accessible, trendy clothing from popular retailers like Forever 21, H&M and Zara. Fast fashion has led to negative effects on the environment due to the ways in which the clothes are produced. In order to create these clothes fast enough to keep up with the demand, they are made in harmful ways using synthetic fibers, and usually don’t last, so it leads to increased consumer waste as these often end up in landfills.
People have become increasingly aware of our responsibility as a country to work on reducing waste, and doing what we can to preserve our environment, so the idea of slow, sustainable fashion has gained momentum and doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Slow fashion consists of durable products that, from the inception of the design process, to sourcing, to production, have the main goal in mind of being an environmentally friendly product that will reduce waste and overall harmful effects.