Eco-activism has been central to Patagonia's DNA long before large retailers assumed responsibility for their environmental footprint. India needs to go back to its roots of minimalistic living and respect for nature to strengthen sustainability efforts in fashion industry
Shopping events such as the ‘Black Friday and Cyber Monday’ (BFCM) sales, leading to mindless consumerism
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With every passing season, the global fashion industry propagates a frenzied pace of change in trends, feeding on consumers’ insecurities, deliberately making them feel off-trend and out of fashion. The fashion cycle has now shifted from the traditional spring/summer and autumn/winter collections to over 50 new micro seasons. Global clothing production doubled between 2000-2015, while the number of times an item was worn before being disposed of declined by 36 percent.
In India, customer spending on clothing rose by a whopping 181 percent between 2010-2018. The expansion of the middle-class population and growing purchasing power is likely to influence a shift from need-based purchasing to aspiration-based purchasing. This problem of overconsumption is further amplified by lucrative deals offered during shopping events such as the ‘Black Friday and Cyber Monday’ (BFCM) sales, leading to mindless consumerism. While increased consumer spending may appear to power the economy, it has palpably hastened environmental degradation. The immediate environmental costs associated with the global fashion industry include increased wastage and material loss (85 percent of textiles end up in landfills or being incinerated), water-intensive production (10,000 litres consumed to produce a pair of jeans), higher energy consumption (energy used in this industry is more than the aviation and shipping industry combined) and account for about 8-10 percent of the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Fast fashion brands have already made in-roads in the country with grave social and environmental impacts. In it, the fast-fashion closet hides abysmally low wages, usage of cheap and toxic materials, inhuman working conditions, massive wastewater and solid waste generation, and material loss, among others. Instead of obsessing over owning more clothes and discarding the old, we need to restore our traditional Indian values of saving and passing on treasured items to the next generation or the under-privileged, and as a by-product of such recycling, preserving precious memories and sentiments. Repair, restore, and refurbish must become part of every fashion brand’s design ethos. According to the Ellen McArthur Foundation, the four circular business models of fashion—resale, rental, repair, and remaking—could be worth $700 billion globally by 2030, constituting a share of about 25 percent of the global fashion market.
Indian couture labels and retail fashion brands such as Anita Dongre, Ekaya Banaras, Doh Tak Keh, The Beach Company, and Vaishali S are among the few that offer repair and refurbishing services. Doodlage and Mrinalini are two Indian ethical, ‘zero-waste’ fashion labels that upcycle local fabric waste to modern styles. However, none of them has gone as far as Patagonia’s campaigns in terms of driving a behavioural change in the way we consume and demand fashion.
Historically, India’s traditions have been rooted in minimalistic living and respect for nature. Global economic integration should not be an excuse for India to move away from its roots in an endeavour to emulate the western formats of business success. Instead, Indian fashion houses could draw inspiration from global avant-gardists such as Patagonia, who are proactively provoking change by beginning a new conversation around sustainable living. Like Patagonia, Indian fashion retail brands must embed environmental and social dimensions into their mission statements and leverage the power of media to mainstream sustainable fashion through advertisements and actions targeted at anti-consumerism and not myopically chase sales growth.
· Ahaana Mahanti, ISB; Raj K Shankar, Associate Professor, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai and DVR Seshadri, ISB
[This article has been reproduced with permission from the Indian School of Business, India]