There are few industries fickler than fashion, changing annually and swapping seasonally. The good news is that fashion can, in theory, change more quickly than the energy or agricultural industries, for example. And when it comes to tackling climate change, agility and the ability to rapidly retool practices will be essential attributes of the most resilient and sustainable industries.
On an average, most clothes are worn only seven times before they’re discarded; forcing an astonishing 150 billion new clothing items to be made annually. Thank ‘fast fashion,’ a business model based on the fabrication of hyper trends and clothing that doesn’t last for consumers to accumulate. But given limited natural resources and the urgent need to protect what remains from further apparel-driven pollution, the cutting edge in fashion will soon need to trend and tack towards something more people-and planet-friendly.
Getting clothing cheap enough for the fashion industry’s disposable model has required massive amounts of cheap material and cheap labour - both of which came with devastatingly high and unaccounted-for costs.