Understanding Fashion

What is fashion & why does it need to be changed?

By definition - fashion is the making and selling of apparel, footwear & accessories.

The general roadmap for having a ready made collection, ready for sale & beyond is:

Designing a style
Pattern making your style
Sampling your style
Sourcing or making from scratch a fabric & haberdashery
Production for your pieces start
Package and send all stock to the brand
Brand re packages and sends to the customer
Customer wears and ( often ) discards shortly after

It doesn't take much to see a few areas within the fashion lifecycle which are wreaking havoc our Planet's resources.

Let's break it down some more!

1. Designing a style

Designing is one of the most important stages of creating a garment / accessory & determining it's overall impact. The fabric you use, closures, quality, dyes all have different environmental affects which need to be considered.

2. Pattern making

Pattern making is the process of creating either a digital or paper template of your garment, so that you can assemble all the individual parts correctly into a finished piece. The patterns often go through a few different samples and variations. This too can be a resource intensive process - from utilising large amounts of paper and undergoing multiple revisions. Digital pathways for this are now common and being innovated for more - which is a great alternative in the interest of saving paper & waste.

3. Sampling your style

Again - samples under go many revisions! When you're creating a large collection, this can amount to a lot of waste.

4. Sourcing your fabric and haberdashery

A lot of change and reduction in environmental impacts can be made at this stage. Where and what is the fabric sourced from? Is the fibre natural? Does it undergo toxic chemicals? What are the impacts of the dyes, labels, zips etc etc. Another thing to think about here is how high the quality of the textile is and how long will it last for?

5. Production for your pieces start

Threads, fabrics, working environment, trimming waste etc - right down to the amount of electricity and water being used, many parts within production have great impact.

6. Package and send all stock to the brand

What's the piece packaged in? Can it be recycled? Can it be non plastic? How far are you shipping it & what are the emissions here?

7. Brand re packages and sends to the customer

Same as above! But adding another layer, what tissue paper is used, stickers, boxes / bags etc.

8. Customer wears and ( often ) discards shortly after

This is the worst part! Think of all the actions and energy, resources, hands, organisation which has gone into creating a piece - now it's often barely worn and thrown away. Often contributing to the large amount of landfill we currently have already.

We can see now, how many areas within creating clothing creates a negative impact - but we can also see, how many opportunities there are for re direction, re structuring and change.

For a future where we start to work alongside nature, give back more than we take & respect the clothing we wear.