Five Reasons Why You Should Join Slow Fashion Season
Do you love clothing? Are you tired of the endless trends? If you said yes to at least one of these questions, Slow Fashion Season is perfect for you. This is a three month online campaign organized by CollAction running from June 21 to September 21. It is the perfect opportunity to join fashion lovers who oppose fast fashion and want to make conscious choices. This is done by avoiding fast fashion brands, trading, upcycling or DIYing clothing, buying thrifted and/or vintage clothing , and supporting sustainable, local, and small fashion labels struggling during COVID-19.
Consider the following five reasons on why you should consider joining the slow fashion movement:
1. Community
What better way to raise awareness of the environmental and societal impacts fashion has on the world then by having a like-minded community supporting you? Simply log into Instagram and follow Slow Fashion Season and the hashtag #slowfashionseason. This will help you be inspired on how to make better fashion choices. There is a diverse array of influencers, bloggers, activists and conscious consumers regularly showcasing different ways on how to wear vintage clothing, how to make different outfits from clothing already in their closet, how to upcycle ill fitting clothing, and their support for local, sustainable and eco-conscious brands. Consider the following accounts:
2. Anti-Materialism
This challenge will help reconceptualize how you see and treat your clothing. It hopes that you will slow down your consumption behaviors and to stop to think before you shop. Instead of participating in the never ending trends introduced by mainstream fashion brands, the goal is to slow down. To engage in slow fashion involves considering the resources and processes needed in making clothing. It takes account the environmental sustainability of garments and that your favorite brands value fair treatment of workers, animals and Mother Earth. The emphasis is consciousness before mindless consumerism.
3. Fast Fashion Is Toxic
Fast fashion is not environmentally sustainable for much longer. Mother Earth is being overburdened by the rapid pace in which we produce, consume and dispose of cheap clothing. The fashion industry is one of the most polluting industries in the world! It’s responsible for:
Producing around 1 billion garments annually with estimated profits of 3 trillion USD
Emitting 5% of the global emissions or around 1.2 billion tons of CO2 each year
Producing 20% of global water waste or 92 million tons of water waste
Using 80 billion cubic metres of freshwater or the equivalent of 32 million Olympic sized swimming pools
Exploiting cheap labor in developing countries where 97% of clothing is produced overseas
Using resource intensive crops such as cotton and polyester that destroys biodiversity and natives natural way of life
Employing 40 million workers throughout the world with 85% being women, which experience physical, mental and verbal abuse and suffer unfair working conditions and wage theft
Supporting a cycle of malicious poverty where workers are not paid a fair, living wage and perpetuates exploitation from unpaid overtime working hours, no alternative employment opportunities, lack of worker rights and unethical backlash from brands when unions are formed
Consumers buying goods at a unhealthy rapid pace and throwing them away to the landfill which is devastating developing countries that have trash shipped to them
“ Every second, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned” - United Nations 2019
About 85% of old clothing end up in landfills while 1% of textile waste is recycled
52 micro-seasons are introduced each year by brands pushing the idea that consumers need to buy more to keep up with the latest trends
Contributes enormously to plastic pollution since synthetic materials make up 98% of clothing, which release microfibers in oceans when washed and also takes hundreds of years to decompose in the ground
4. Become Part Of The Solution
Slow Fashion needs as many supporters as it can get. This movement will spread and thrive with the collective gathering of diverse individuals coming together to make the world a better place. Fashion is a powerful tool that can help alleviate the pain and suffering of garment workers all over the world. The more you become immersed and engaged in slow fashion you will carry forward the changes needed in the industry. Slow Fashion Season CollAction campaign is but one way of transforming the fashion industry by motivating us to reconsider consumption decision making and purchasing actions. Without taking the pledge, CollAction will fail to reach its 25,000 goal. It is currently at 10,526 at the time this was written.
According to CollAction, if the Slow Fashion Season campaign receives 25,000 pledges
“ we will save the equivalent of up to 750 million liters of water and 2.5 million kilograms of CO2 emissions* and we will push to transform the industry.”
5. Be a Sustainable Queen and/or King
Slow Fashion Season is just the beginning. There are many ways you can be sustainable and ethical in your apparel consumer behaviors. Consider joining activist organizations that are engaged in bringing truth and justice to issues happening present day:
