Slow Fashion: Aesthetics Meets Ethics (2024)

More and more people are waking up to the appalling human rights and environmental costs of the global garment industry.

The death knell struck for the bulk of UK/European textile manufacturing as far back as the 1970s as outsourcing to Asia and the Far East saw bottom lines plunge on account of the cheaper-than-chips labour costs. Because how else did we imagine it was possible to buy a T-shirt for just a few pounds? No one gave a thought to the plight of the garment workers – worse than in our satanic mills of the 19th century – until a dangerously unstable garment factory in Rana Plaza, Bangladesh, collapsed in 2013 killing 1,200 workers and injuring 2,300 more. Garments strewn among the rubble had high-street labels that everyone in the West would have recognised.

The implicated high-street brands quickly issued statements declaring their ignorance of such conditions, hence innocence, and promised to pay compensation (very little, very slowly) and vet suppliers more carefully. But self-regulation is always going to be thin where profits are fat and, in spite of the eco credentials declared by many Western brands, supply chains remain opaque, perhaps deliberately so.

All this before you get to the appalling environmental injury of textile production and waste across the world which is 2nd only to the oil industry. Seriously.

Safia Minney was an early adopter of ethical, organic and Fair Trade textiles, setting up her company People Tree almost 30 years ago. In this book (2016), she brings style and ethics together to scorch the myth that sustainable clothes are dowdy, earnest and expensive and she does a pretty good job. In the five years since it was published, I believe consumer demand for sustainable, organic, Fair Trade clothing has soared. Moreover, buyers want to know the provenance of their clothes and are no longer prepared to take the word of the big brands. We seem to have reached the point where refusing to buy mass-produced stuff we don’t need has become radical, an act of disruption on behalf of the environment and human rights. It would have bewildered my parent’s war-time generation.

‘Buy less, buy better’ - Dame Vivienne Westwood.

The big fashion story of the 21st century has been the rise and intensification of ‘fast fashion’: big knock-off production of cat-walk copies in the major label stores within a couple of weeks of the seasonal shows, this is high turnover and high sales of clothing with a short life span – short because whereas we once had two seasons, we now have four or more so styles change more frequently, and short because many of the products are cheaply made so have a only a short wearable life before they lose shape or fall apart. Our high streets are crowded with the temples of this form: Primark, H&M, Topshop, Mango and the doyen of the model, Zara. Yet, as more and more people are starting to notice, someone, somewhere is paying the price of our £3/€4 t-shirts or £10 summer frocks, and it sure isn’t the major labels. Most of the cost is borne by the workers who make those items, and the environment in which they work.

As with so many other cultural sectors, fashion has seen a backlash: fast fashion has been challenged by slow fashion – ethically produced, environmentally sound (often organic) clothing. This excellent review of and delve into the world of slow fashion by Safia Minney, founder of one of the first eco-conscious, fair trade labels People Tree, not only provides us with an enlightening exploration of the people involved in this sector, but also provides an accessible insight to many of the most challenging question of labour and environmental costs. She does so not by building a single monograph of business, scientific and socio-economic analysis, but by letting the practitioners in the field tell their stories.

The book is divided into five sections, giving voice to critics and campaigners, fashion influencers, designers, social entrepreneurs and the owners of eco-concept stores. Each section is made up mainly of texts provided by practitioners or interviews with them, from the 6 social entrepreneurs to the 30 eco-concept store owners/managers we are given insight to their motivations, the kinds of design, business and political choices they have had to make and their critique of the current state of the fashion sector, from the effects of the building collapse at Rana Plaza in 2013 killing 1135 workers to the influence of grandparents to shop ambience, from the costs of producing industrial cotton to the dynamics in Bangladeshi worker cooperatives Minney explores and gives voice to all aspects of the fashion business.

It is good to see the retailers included, providing a considerable degree of grounding to those of us might tend to run off to idealism by reminding us that for most people the prime driver for clothing purchases is not business and production ethics but style and appearance – this is fashion after all. The range if voices is impressive, and includes some well-known names in the field – such as Lucy Siegel, Tamsin Lejeune, Lily Cole, Anoushka Probyn, Zandra Rhodes, Eileen Fisher and Andrew Morgan as well as the less well-known. It is also really good to see the number of Japanese voices included given the extent of eco-consciousness, although as one contributor notes that consciousness often does not join the dots of fair trade and ecologically aware clothing decisions. On top of all that, the pieces are short, bite sized comments of 1-3 pages.

The book is beautifully produced, attractive and appealing – although I wonder why the publisher (New Internationalist) did not decide to issue this under some form of creative commons license to enhance the likelihood of sharing the message. There is a growing body of work around dealing with slow fashion and production ethics, but this is really good place to start.

This gem of a book offers a wide variety of views on the changing fashion industry. I am very interested in fair trade and organic products as a way to create social and environmental justice, and this is a great resource for me to come back to for inspiration. It offers a hopeful and attainable way forward. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in a healthy and sustainable lifestyle! Although it does not cover the entire movement, it includes perspectives from many big players and is an excellent place to begin. The book was published in 2016, which is also something to consider since the short interviews and essays inside are somewhat placed in time (although the timeless wisdom contained inside them certainly is not). However this was not a problem for me reading it at the beginning of 2017! The book also includes beautiful photographs on nearly every page and was a joy for me to read.

A book like this should go so much further. The nature of it, many short interviews where workers, designers and small businesses repeat the same values, means that it winds up frustratingly shallow. It doesn't go into detail about aesthetics or ethics. I want to know more about the workers at Swallows in particular. And I wish they had paid a professional photographer.

Safia Minney, founder of People Tree, pioneers in Fair Trade and ethical fashion gives an insightful and informative look into the ethical fashion industry from the viewpoint of farmers, garment workers, designers, models, photographers, reporters, brand owners, shop owners, and your every day consumers. Whether you live an ethical lifestyle or not, this book is a must read because it includes so much information that needs to be shared about the negative effects of the fast fashion industry and the positive actions that are taking place to counteract that kind of behavior. I give it four stars because it can sometimes be repetitive given that a lot of the interviews are from people with like-minded ideas and values.