Reimagining Sustainable Fashion: Interdisciplinary Perspectives for a Regenerative Future
By examining sustainable fashion through the kaleidoscope of interdisciplinary perspectives, a recent project on the subject gained a dynamic and multifaceted view of a potential future. CUSP deputy director Fergus Lyon lays down a snapshot.
Blog by Fergus Lyon
The current fast fashion industry, and the even more accelerated ultra-fast fashion, are major drivers of climate change and ecological destruction. However, novel solutions are emerging that could lead to a just transition—if they can displace current practices.
Sustainable fashion is a highly complex, context-specific issue that demands diverse perspectives and insights from various academic disciplines. Our Regenerative Post-Growth Fashion research project, funded by the ESRC’s ACCESS programme, led us to explore the contribution of different social sciences.
The profoundly interdisciplinary project has brought together a team cutting across academic domains and approaches: led by Patrick Elf who has a background in business studies and psychology, Safia Minney who brings her extensive experience in leading a sustainable and fair trade fashion brand, Andrea Werner who specialises in philosophy and business ethics, and Fergus Lyon with a background in geography and business. We have also included researchers from other disciplines. While each of them offers unique perspectives, we find that it is the interaction of these disciplines that allows nuanced and often deeper insights to emerge.
Patterns and possibilities
Our project began with the premise that most of the current fashion industry relies on destructive and unsustainable practices, including poor working conditions and extensive resource extraction, resulting in significant greenhouse gas emissions and harmful impacts on water supplies and wider nature. Regenerative alternatives are emerging through the adoption and development of more sustainable business models that use organic materials, follow sustainable production processes, and promote worker welfare along complex supply chains. These businesses, along with fashion buyers connecting producers and brands, often emphasise the longevity and repairability of clothes, standing in stark opposition to the throw-away culture promoted by (ultra) fast fashion.
By examining some of those alternative business approaches from various social science perspectives, the Regenerative Post-Growth Fashion project has produced a range of films and reports. These are based on research by Safia Minney in India and Bangladesh, exploring possibilities and challenges to demonstrate best practices.
Reflecting on the need to understand diverse perspectives coming from social sciences (see also ACCESS objectives), we brought together researchers from different disciplines to review some of our film material and explore issues through their distinct lenses.[1]
Drawing on this interdisciplinary discussion, we highlight the different influences coming from the broad set of academic traditions below. This exercise is open to criticism, as good research should cross these disciplinary boundaries, and there is much overlap within social sciences. We present these ideas to initiate a conversation about how sustainable fashion needs the inputs of all these disciplines working together.
Taking stock
Much research on sustainable fashion draws on the academic discipline of Design Studies. While design has promoted increased production, fast fashion and the tyranny of novelty from seasonal collections, sustainable design often incorporates a broader body of disciplines to understand resource circularity, waste flows, and user behaviours. Business and Management Studies, and specifically research on responsible innovation, also focuses on circularity within supply chains, emphasising transparency, stakeholder engagement, and balancing social, environmental, and commercial objectives at the same time.
Conventional fast fashion is often underpinned by an economic perspective prioritising cost-reduction, volume increase, and short-term profits, with little regard for societal and environmental costs. In contrast, Ecological Economics, which underpins our project, advocates for a post-growth perspective. This approach avoids the preoccupation with crude measures of economic growth and, instead, seeks sufficiency, aesthetically appealing yet durable and functional clothing, and production methods that respect planetary boundaries and ensure wellbeing of workers and consumers.
Perspectives from Geography help us understand globalised supply chains, how they shape the journeys of objects, their relationships to labour standards and environmental impacts. This also links to our post-growth approach, emphasising localised production and consumption, highlighting the relevance of craft producers, and adding to research on craft as a form of ‘slow work’. Cultural Geography in turn examines sustainable fashion’s role in creating cultural landscapes and critiques the Eurocentric and North American focus of conventional fashion research, advocating for decolonising these approaches.
Sociology and Anthropology offer deeper insights into material cultures, everyday life and consumption practices, and shed light on the power relationships within the fashion supply chains. These disciplines examine coloniality and power imbalances between ‘Northern’ consumers and ‘Southern’ producers, advocating for overcoming these inequities, and strengthening local agency. They emphasise the recognition of indigenous knowledge, craft skills and local markets, and explore various definitions of regenerative practices, rooted in indigenous tradition.
A regenerative fashion approach must consider the predominantly female workforce’s conditions and explore initiatives that empower women and give them a voice in the fashion industry. Within Sociology, gender studies and feminist theories hold the potential to bring to the fore injustices, such as feminised workplaces and dehumanisation practices, that—too often—remain overlooked in sustainable business and climate change research.
Research on power relations in sustainable fashion also benefit from a Political Science perspective with its insights into activism. Research in this field has not just been focused on national legislation and regulation of bad practice. Instead, Political Science adds academic expertise on local social movements and resistance—though trade unions and other forms of civil society activity related to campaigning, lobbying and activism. Law, though often missing in these debates, contributes research—if still limited in amount—on greenwashing and intellectual property of sustainable products.
Consumer behaviour, especially fashion purchasing, drives demand and is a strong focus of traditional brands. Research on consumption comes from Sociology and especially Psychology, it explores decision-making, changing consumption ethics, and the attitude-value-behaviour gap in consumers.
Looking ahead
This snapshot of our discussions and disciplinary foci highlights the richness and diversity within each discipline and the fruitful interdisciplinary exchange of ideas between disciplines. This blog post provides an overview of the interdisciplinarity underpinning our work and discussions within our Regenerative Post-Growth Fashion project, based on our workshops and insights from the research team.
Emerging findings from the project are not confined to academia but are intended for broader impact. The team plans to integrate these insights into teaching, contribute research papers, and actively influence policy and practice. A key emphasis lies in amplifying the voices of actors at the forefront of global fashion supply chains, often overlooked yet pivotal in effecting tangible change.
To find our more about the research see: https://accessnetwork.uk/challenging-the-unsustainability-of-the-uk-fashion-and-textile-sector/
[1] We are grateful for the input from the participants (in alphabetical order): Prof Sandy Black, Centre for Sustainable Fashion (UAL); Dr Mila Burcikova, Centre for Sustainable Fashion (UAL); Dr Lucie Hernandez, Materials Science Research Centre Royal College of Art; Dr Francesco Mazzarella, London College of Fashion (UAL); Dr Kirsten Scott, Instituto Marangoni London; Dr Tuukka Toivonen, Central Saint Martins (UAL); Prof Sophie Woodward, University of Manchester.
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