How to Understand Slow Fashion
Slow fashion is an alternative to fast fashion, where designers, consumers, buyers, and retailers are more aware of the impact of apparel on communities, ecosystems and garment workers to ensure social, sustainable, environmental and ethical responsibility of apparel.
This can be achieved by focusing on designing, producing and consuming apparel that is quality based, versus time-based. Quality based clothing refers to consumers purchasing products that they estimate will last a long time based on the materials and production method of the garment.
In addition, quality-based clothing refers to the intrinsic value placed within the purchase of the garment. Even if a top is from a fast fashion retailer, a consumer always has the option in setting intentions of what the values they put within the purchase of their clothing. A practical ‘cost per wear’ equation can be used to consider the monetary cost and potential value a garment can provide.
Cost per wear = (price of garment + maintenance) / number of times the garment will be worn
Stop to think about what garments mean to you if you don’t intentionally place values to the garments you buy. Challenge yourself to take five minutes to apply the cost per wear equation to see if you really need to make that purchase.
Contemplating the use of the garment before a purchase, can help anyone become conscientious consumer. This allows slow fashion to take tangible meaning in our shopping habits, and within our everyday life. It has the potential in pushing us beyond the immediate gratification of fast fashion, which is based on cheap accessibility and impulse shopping habits.
Don’t think of fashion as disposable, think of fashion as infinite.
Take a moment to think about that. This is quite an overexaggerated end to the spectrum of disposable but imagine if clothing could last an infinity. Would you be so kin in buying without much thought then? If we were to treat clothing with the idea that it would last forever, it would help us see clothing in a entirely different light.
What is the Slow Fashion Movement?
The term for slow fashion was first introduced in 2007 by Kate Fletcher. She stated that, Slow fashion is not a seasonal trend that comes and goes like animal print, but a sustainable fashion movement that is gaining momentum. This movement therefore aims in continuing to prompt more and more consumers to really think about why they are buying their clothing to avoid fast fashion. Instead, it urges the alternative of buying clothing that will bring inherent value. This could be done by buying clothing that is made locally, fair trade and/or durable so it can last years.
The Slow Fashion Movement is quite like the slow food movement.
In 1986, Carlo Petrini founded the Slow Food Movement in order to promote the pleasure of food through the philosophy of it being good, clean and fair. His antithesis to fast food can be accomplished by growing and eating local foods, which maintains the biodiversity of unique dishes, changing the relationship of consumer into co-producer to encourage deeper relationships with farmers and producers and getting educated about all the facets of the food we eat.
Why is Slow Fashion important?
As consumers, it is important to know the impact we have based on our purchasing decisions. Once we are aware of our effects, we should strive to reconceptualize our relationship with clothes. Thereon, the Slow Fashion Movement creates a space to reimagine what fashion could mean, reshape what fashion could look like in our everyday life’s and redesign a different system that provides dignity and respect to garment workers while making a sustainable profit through the production of lovely, conscientious apparel.
Fast fashion profitability stems from labor exploitation, maintaining cycles of poverty, and contributing to climate change through the environmental destruction from its overproduction and manufacturing of garments.
The New Vision of Fashion: The Era of Sustainability
Slow fashion is a focus of quality over quantity.
By focusing on quality, the fashion industry can link responsibility with awareness. As consumers, engaging in slow fashion indicates thinking critically and acting ethically when purchasing apparel.
In addition, apparel businesses could engage in slow fashion by respecting their workers, consumers and the environment equally through strong ethical and moral business policies and transparent supply chain management.