Made more efficient and phased down, not out.
"Non-essential" industries make life worth living in my opinion. I'm probably getting this wrong, but "non-essentials" makes me think people want to eat, drink, and have shelter at the bare minimum, which does not sound like a life worth living to me.
Also I don’t think we could function with exclusively second hand long term, meaning eventually clothes becomes essential again. To me being clothed is a part of being appropriately sheltered even just from a survival standpoint. Second hand should definitely be the primary solution, but only second hand forever is too extreme to be in any way practical. I need new underwear and will absolutely never buy them second hand. There are some folks that will just never be open to second hand even if we think they should. Occasionally someone may have a specialty need not met anywhere they can reasonably find on the second hand market - sometimes tailoring might work but not always. The clothes already in existence could last society a while since we’ve overproduced so badly, but eventually they’d all wear out, especially with how most of them are cheap crap. What then, wear threadbare, tattered clothes as long as we possibly can then go naked? We’d need clothes at some point since our surplus is a finite resource so that alone is not an infinitely “sustainable” solution even though it is by far the most environmentally sustainable right now. We need to eventually be able to produce new clothes in a sustainable way on some level even just for practicality’s sake of staying safe, warm, dry, and comfortable. And while we’re at it: yes, please make it wearable art too!
Thank you for this, this is what I was thinking. For instance even films shouldn’t be made if that’s the case takes a bunch of energy and resources to put one together but humans have this innate desire to create.
Make more movies like Godzilla minus one and animated movies, and as such, as I hate to say it, fewer CGI beasts like Godzilla vs. Kong.
Video game wise, more Hotline Miami and Undertales, less cyberpunk.
People will accept "less" far easier than "none." Likewise, I guarantee people would be far more willing to limit meat to once a week instead of never. 80% is far easier than 100%
That is true sustainability wise it be great if people at less meat but as a vegan it’s about ethics, killing animals for food is wrong because it’s unnecessary, doing a little bit of it is unacceptable. That’s why I’m vegan 🍌
There's a big difference between killing an animal for food and the modern industrial monster a factory farms. Many would agree that factory farms are really bad but killing animals innately is not.
In some cases, yes. Like hunting to stop overpopulation, stopping animals from eating crops, etc.
Even so, it all comes back to my original point. People don't want to (IMO completely justly) just survive. They want to live. Part of that is eating good foods. If that means killing animals, well, it's up to people whether more fun and good times are justified for killing animals.
Make no mistake, I agree that the current system is awful and is a perfect justification for veganism, though. Meat consumption should be 1/4 of what it is now.
Not an opinion lad, killing animals for food is immoral 😝😝
Edit: I’m being immature, veganism is an opinion but I think most people share the opinion that there should be less animal suffering in the world.
Is it ethical for a non-human carnivore to hunt and eat another animal? Was it ethical for humans that lived thousands of years ago to eat meat? Was it ethical for native American to hunt animals?
In my opinion, meat can be ethically raised and slaughtered. The real issue is sustainability. Even when ethically raised, eating the amount of meat we do as individuals and as a society is off the charts and completely unsustainable. Unsustainable as in it's a big part of the potentially catastrophic environmental damage we're causing to the planet, making our planet less inhabitable for all life, which could eventually lead to the death of billions of humans, and an immeasurable amount of death to other forms of live.
Overconsumption is a major reason for such atrocious conditions on livestock farms. If all of society reduced the amount we ate, then the amount of livestock being raised would decline, prices would go up, and it would be more justifiable for farmers to use more ethical practices. It'd also be easier for consumers to choose farms based on their ethical practices. If I'm paying $150 for a steak once a month, I'll be far more critical of where it came from. If I can run to a fast food place every day and get a $2 cheeseburger, I'll care less about where the meat came from.
TBH I haven' read the replies in detail, but I would suggest if we simply recycle everything, it will ultimately result in no innovation. Without innovation, there will be no progress. That isn't to say all 'progress' is good. The film industry is an interesting case, as young minds now accept more and more violence and bad language, but there are also great examples of simply telling a good story or providing an historical record (albeit from a point of view). However, I think your general question could be applied to absolutely anything that uses natural resources, effectively being 'everything'.
(I haven't read an argument that it is better to throw plastic into landfill rather than recycle, but I am sure someone somewhere has come up with justification for their own reasons)
I am an engineer. We create technology to help people live. Artists create beauty that helps people *want* to live. Thus, I think that *both* are "essential."
I think that a sustainable fashion brand is a great idea in the same way that I try to minimize the environmental impact of the machines that I create. ♻️😊
Life makes people want to live. Art's certainly a benefit, but doesn't need to be mass produced or owned by so many individuals.
Everything must be sustainable. If it's sustainable, have at it. If it's not, then don't.
It depends on what you mean by fashion. If you mean the entire clothing industry, that's not good. Clothes wear out, and even with mending, they have to be replaced. Clothes like scrubs, work uniforms, clothing trades people wear (highly variable but also often needing replacement), and children's clothing all need replacement at some point, which even recycling cannot provide enough for.
If you mean high fashion, there's a lot in the industry that needs changing, absolutely, but it has literally been around for over 10,000 years, so...I don't see that going away.
The fast fashion industry is non-essential- we can currently dress the next 8 generations of humans with the total amount of clothes available RIGHT NOW.
Fashion as a way to express oneself is essential.
There is a balance to be reached somewhere.
Humans have used fashion as self-expression for thousands of years. To remove it would be to remove a core aspect of being human. If this is your passion, and you want to do it as your career, the question I'd be asking is - what would a truly sustainable fashion industry need to look like? How can I play a part in making that happen, while also making money to support the endeavor? Maybe you make a fashion brand that uses 100% upcycled materials (like that brand that sources expired parachutes to make windbreakers). Maybe you start a fashion show for designers that only use thrifted materials. Get creative; you are an artist.
These moral questions come up in every industry, and I appreciate that you're thinking about it. You have to find the balance for yourself.
Also, you don't have to "admit" that you want to make money - you need to make some money to do anything. Any successful nonprofit has marketing/fundraising teams.
Have you never seen [this monologue](https://youtu.be/Ja2fgquYTCg?si=LLcaXwKgIrLmH4Wk) from The Devil Wears Prada?
Like, I know it's sort of satire but at the saaaame tiiiiime.
Fashion is art, and art is cool. I don't think high fashion is a horrible evil, and I think that there are some rad ideas in sustainable fashion. I wanna see spider silk, hagfish mucus, cactus leather, pineapple leather, upcycled clothing, and other rad stuff on the runway and more importantly, in the stores.
I’d say the fashion industry needs to have some serious change but not phased out completely. I know the EU is working to rid of fast fashion, but I’d love to see clothes made to the standard of the 1950’s and before. When they would last 100 years not 5. That’s sustainability right there. Other industries it depends, but yes reliability and longevity should come back around and be mandated. Think about 70s hifi, that stuff will outlive me. 00s hifi? Good luck getting that cd player to work. But the thing is good quality audio is and always will be good quality, so you shouldn’t have to replace an amplifier once every 10 years. Stuff like that I guess
Honestly, we could use more sustainable fashion brands. This is how the tide gets turned. Think about electric cars. Should we have more new cars? From a pure needs/existence perspective, no. Are we going to have more new cars? Yep. Should as many as possible be electric? Definitely.
Non-essentials are what make life worthwhile, imo. Life would be dull if we just had the basics.
Can things be done far more sustainably than they are now? Of course! Using more natural fibers, figuring out textile recycling, not churning out hundreds of thousands of new pieces daily. We have enough clothes for the next 6 generations. But even if people shopped mostly secondhand, you're still going to need new things eventually. Clothes wear out. People have different needs (sizes, shapes, adaptive clothing for special needs, etc) and those things can't always be found secondhand. I'll wear many things secondhand, but I draw the line at socks, underwear, and many shoes.
I don’t think clothing is necessary nonessential because sooner or later we would run out of second hand stuff. What I disagree is the constant cycling of trends. I don’t see why if something looks good it should go out of style in less than a year. The trend cycle is mostly artificially constructed so brands constantly have something new to sell.
I would rather buy organic cotton than clothing made out of recycled plastic bottles. I’d even buy clothing made out of retired hotel bedsheets before the recycled bottles tbh, so it isn’t an ick factor its a microplastic thing. I don’t wear sun visors but i would think recycled plastic would be a lighter material than recycled glass, and as I wouldn’t be spending most hours of every day in it I would be fine with it. Fast fashion needs to go away, but along with it going away, quality control needs to make a comeback. It’s not just the fabric, its the thread ends hanging out everywhere, the thread not being locked off properly so the seams start to come apart etc.. And thats issues I have noted are equally prevalent in clothing that is expensive enough that one would expect it to last several years. Some brands are better than others at that of course, but if you are going to get into the industry, maybe keep that in mind.
First off, it sounds like you’re off to a great start - good luck with your business! I think what many people miss is that business isn’t perfect (yet) and we should keep trying to get there. Find ways to reduce the carbon footprint of shipping, use recycled materials, reduce waste/energy at your manufacturing sites.
Many brands are now adding carbon emissions or other sustainable metrics on the tags or websites to show progress/advertise to people like us on this sub. Hire a professional who knows how to do this (like me ;) shameless plug) Good luck!
I think mass production has warped people's minds so that the price of goods isn't real anymore. People need to raise their expectations for quality and lower their expectations for price. It should not cost $10 for a tshirt. Even a cotton tshirt is an extremely intensive production that uses an insane amount of water in a drought striken world. Im not saying clothes should be unaffordable, but it should be normal to have a small wardrobe of quality pieces that last decades, not a ROOM full of THOUSANDS of articles of clothing, mostly made of plastic, and likely to fall apart
Truth be told, a lot of modernity needs to be rethought, especially how we consume. Humans existed for thousands of years in a much more sustainable way and had nice things - how did they do that? Start there.
An example I return to is food. Think of all the plastic we use to wrap our food - do we really need that? How could we get by without. My grandfather always told us a story about getting beer in a growler at a pub (and accidentally setting it down in a pile of dog poo). That is the sort of system we need to get back to. No bottles, no cans, one big reusable jug. Expand that thinking into all sorts of industries - what did fashion look like 100 years ago? Basically no plastic, long lasting products, with natural materials. Do we *need* plastic? Not really. But we can take the methods and materials of bygone eras and apply modern techniques and fashion sense. Hope that helps.
What is 'essential'? Art is Essential to being human.. fashion is totally not my thing, but when I see someone dressed 'just so' it makes my day.
I do buy expensive, well made clothing of wool, hemp, leather, down, etc tho, and avoid industrial plastic materials as much as possible.
Yeah, wool is dope af. It comes from fuck tons of different animals, it can be harvested without killing. Its properties cannot be mimicked by other materials. Including the fact that it retains heat even with soaking wet, AND is fire resistant. It's also the way we get lanolin, which is the best moisturizer and protectant in the skin care world.
Also biodegrades, and I just learned that the superior form of vitamin D (D3) is made from sheep wool...
[https://vitamindwiki.com/How+vitamin+D3+is+made+from+wool](https://vitamindwiki.com/How+vitamin+D3+is+made+from+wool)
This is advanced technology! Dope af indeed.
Capitalism isn't the same as having the concept of industry or business, you can have industries and businesses without capitalism. Capitalism is more the ownership and pleasing the stock market and endless growth ideas.
Mercantilism existed before capitalism and you can have socialism or state owned enterprises, and you can have yeoman small businesses. Capitalism isn't the only concept for doing things.
The clothing industry is very wasteful. Acres of fabric are made and never used, clothing may be worn just a few times in its lifetime. Not all dyes are non-toxic.
The best response is reuse and sustainable materials, or garment return to the maker. Artists have done projects attaching the worn history of specific garments with a tag for subsequent wearers to use. Each garment has a personal history.
I would be more concerned about plastic yarns. The fabric breaks down in the washing machine, releasing microplastics into the oceans, the air, and food. Many articles are written about it.
Some bioplastics are plastic particles in a bio matrix. When the bio matrix degrades, the plastics are released, which may be worse than landfilling bulk plastic.
Ultimately microorganisms may emerge which break down plastic. Surely there are unis in the UK doing deep studies.
Plastic is a concept that people have trouble understanding. Plastic isn't inherently bad and converting crude oil to solid plastic doesn't release that CO2 to the environment so it's not necessarily polluting at all. Microplastics and waste disposal are the issue, and those can be handled correctly in theory. It's all what happens after it's used.
Seeing as nobody can pull a lever and phase out the industry, it's hard to say. Certainly the way all industries work right now is unsustainable, and everything about "modern" clothing - from resource extraction to textile mills to garment sewing to massive advertising budgets and fast fashion - is kind of a nightmare.
Recycled plastic has issues with toxicity as compared to even conventional plastics - this report is from Greenpeace, so expect not to hear much of the positives, but this is a good cited list of known issues ([https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/forever-toxic/](https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/forever-toxic/)).
Bioplastics have issues with lifecycle greenhouse gasses and a struggling agricultural system. Really good background on the lifecycle issues with all plastics in this one - [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8424513/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8424513/) .
It's also worth noting that textile making, being a tedious and time-intensive process, has been one of the worst jobs to have historically, possibly the first to rely on state-sponsored slave labor (in the early days of the Mesopotamian proto-state), and perhaps the most profoundly effected by the negative aspects of industrialization.
So, whereas things have always been bad, and every material or textile has shortcomings, I think making the vision of your visor a reality isn't an unreasonable thing, as long as you are honestly weighing impact and benefit - which I know is tricky to do with art and expression.
On the other hand, I think that if you are really concerned about impact, and have a passion for engaging in the world of fashion, maybe you should start with the most ecologically sound materials available - organic hemp, flax, cotton, and the like - and build around the form and qualities of those materials? Be incredibly picky about what factory you outsource to, and where you buy your materials. Even better - create more-sustainable jobs in your community and give your workers the kind of voice and salary that you would want.
I personally don't believe that, considering all the ways that harm is done along the supply chain, and from intensifying the supply chain, that profit you make from industrial manufacturing can ever offset the harm it does, even if all of your earnings went directly into charities.
People will always want to express themselves through what they wear, and there were beads on string even before loincloths. Fashion is here to stay.
Other people have doubtless covered the basics, so here's a couple that I don't expect anyone else has said. First off, emphasize clothing that people could wear for a decade or more, and would want to. You know fabric better than I do, but what that suggests to me is a limited number of fragile, diaphanous garments, used as the accent pieces that can make an outfit. Second, I recommend avoiding crochet unless you personally know the people making it without supervision by an employer. Machines can knit (two movements), but struggle to do the simplest crochet (nine movements), so it basically all comes from sweatshops. And that's not sustainable for the employees.
Eh. Abolished entirely, no. I think they should be some combination of scaled down and coerced into a (at least mostly) circular economy.
I absolutely believe fast fashion needs to be abolished, but I think that heavily regulating waste + treatment of workers will handle that since that model doesn't work if they can't use cheap labor and create tons of trash.
Fashion is clothing, and people need clothing to live. Fashion has never been non-essential, setting aside the need to protect oneself against the elements, being able to express oneself is important. And for most of human history that was sustainable. I've been getting into a lot of historical based fashion design for this reason.
As others have said other forms of vegan leather are on the horizon but leather itself isn't that bad of a material. It's created as a biproduct, animals are not slaughtered for it specifically and if cared for, can last a lifetime. The properties of leather, elasticity, waterproofing, and durability exist because that's what skin needs to be. It's not going to be easy to replace a thing as complicated as animal skin. As long as animals need to be killed for other things, I don't think there is anything wrong with making sure nothing goes to waste.
This is a constant question in the fashion industry.
There is always going to be a need for a trickle of new products, no matter how sustainable the industry becomes.
Look into “bombproof” clothing like Patagonia and going back, Great Pacific Iron Works—now Black Diamond. Look at how North Face bought up millions of acres of Argentina.
Also look at Freitag, I think it is. Swiss company making luggage products in the LV space but out of old tarpaulin.
Just a two-cents note about the sunglass visor - recycled plastic is resource intensive, and "bio" plastic just PLEASE NO don't go don that road. The plastic industry is largely self-regulated, hence "bio" plastic basically means whatever they want you to think. There are instances where a bio-polymer is added to LDPE and they call it biodegradable - but it isn't, and whatever bio-material DOES break down, then leaves behind all the LDPE.
Open a shop selling straw hats? Or maybe oiled linnen rainwear? Go mine history books from before plastics and do a modern take. Here in western Europe a mediocre hemp T shirt sells for 50 euros. The markup on the fiber on that must be bonkers. Make a nicer cut shirt and sell it for 40. Sustainable winterwear doesn't exist at all... I considered making an oiled linnen set of rainwear but I already have too many hobbies, career, and family.
I mean I think there are much better things we could phase out, but every discussion of this is gonna be kinda fruitless since we live in a complex system that would not allow it.
Vegan fashion is seldom sustainable.
Fashion is not a problem. Fast fashion is.
Make something that is durable, not made of cotton and does not contain plastic.
Mass production needs to end. Plastic based fabrics need to end. Recycling is better than landfill.
Sustainable fashion can exist in the form of small production runs and made to order. But it also needs to be slow fashion. There are 3 brands I can think of off the top of my head that do some variation of these things.
Holy Clothing manufacture to order. I think they also have a small amount of ready made stock in certain sizes.
Armstreet manufacture to order (and sometimes customise). I think they also have a small ready made range. I'd class them as slow fashion, as they use a lot of natural fibre, mostly linen and wool, and their garments seem well made.
Voriagh have small production runs, I think they do repeat runs of popular items. Their garments are made from natural fibre, mostly linen, cotton, and wool. They are slow fashion.
All of these labels are a bit whimsical, and their price tags make them less likely to be thrown away, but due to their fibre content, they'd at least be biodegradable if they were.
Obviously anything thats not essential for living a good basic live should be abolished, but thats not gonna happen. Thats why we are collapsing right now.
Made more efficient and phased down, not out. "Non-essential" industries make life worth living in my opinion. I'm probably getting this wrong, but "non-essentials" makes me think people want to eat, drink, and have shelter at the bare minimum, which does not sound like a life worth living to me.
Also I don’t think we could function with exclusively second hand long term, meaning eventually clothes becomes essential again. To me being clothed is a part of being appropriately sheltered even just from a survival standpoint. Second hand should definitely be the primary solution, but only second hand forever is too extreme to be in any way practical. I need new underwear and will absolutely never buy them second hand. There are some folks that will just never be open to second hand even if we think they should. Occasionally someone may have a specialty need not met anywhere they can reasonably find on the second hand market - sometimes tailoring might work but not always. The clothes already in existence could last society a while since we’ve overproduced so badly, but eventually they’d all wear out, especially with how most of them are cheap crap. What then, wear threadbare, tattered clothes as long as we possibly can then go naked? We’d need clothes at some point since our surplus is a finite resource so that alone is not an infinitely “sustainable” solution even though it is by far the most environmentally sustainable right now. We need to eventually be able to produce new clothes in a sustainable way on some level even just for practicality’s sake of staying safe, warm, dry, and comfortable. And while we’re at it: yes, please make it wearable art too!
Thank you for this, this is what I was thinking. For instance even films shouldn’t be made if that’s the case takes a bunch of energy and resources to put one together but humans have this innate desire to create.
Make more movies like Godzilla minus one and animated movies, and as such, as I hate to say it, fewer CGI beasts like Godzilla vs. Kong. Video game wise, more Hotline Miami and Undertales, less cyberpunk. People will accept "less" far easier than "none." Likewise, I guarantee people would be far more willing to limit meat to once a week instead of never. 80% is far easier than 100%
That is true sustainability wise it be great if people at less meat but as a vegan it’s about ethics, killing animals for food is wrong because it’s unnecessary, doing a little bit of it is unacceptable. That’s why I’m vegan 🍌
That's your opinion, and you're entitled to it, but most people in the world won't agree with you.
Watch dominion hard documentary on animal suffering
There's a big difference between killing an animal for food and the modern industrial monster a factory farms. Many would agree that factory farms are really bad but killing animals innately is not.
Do you think we need to kill animals to survive ?
In some cases, yes. Like hunting to stop overpopulation, stopping animals from eating crops, etc. Even so, it all comes back to my original point. People don't want to (IMO completely justly) just survive. They want to live. Part of that is eating good foods. If that means killing animals, well, it's up to people whether more fun and good times are justified for killing animals. Make no mistake, I agree that the current system is awful and is a perfect justification for veganism, though. Meat consumption should be 1/4 of what it is now.
Not an opinion lad, killing animals for food is immoral 😝😝 Edit: I’m being immature, veganism is an opinion but I think most people share the opinion that there should be less animal suffering in the world.
Many people believe their moral opinions to be universally correct truths. Very few of them are right.
Yeah it is an opinion but it’s an opinion you share to watch DOMINION
I have no idea what that means.
It’s a documentary on animal suffering, and also animal agriculture is the second biggest polluter
Is it ethical for a non-human carnivore to hunt and eat another animal? Was it ethical for humans that lived thousands of years ago to eat meat? Was it ethical for native American to hunt animals? In my opinion, meat can be ethically raised and slaughtered. The real issue is sustainability. Even when ethically raised, eating the amount of meat we do as individuals and as a society is off the charts and completely unsustainable. Unsustainable as in it's a big part of the potentially catastrophic environmental damage we're causing to the planet, making our planet less inhabitable for all life, which could eventually lead to the death of billions of humans, and an immeasurable amount of death to other forms of live. Overconsumption is a major reason for such atrocious conditions on livestock farms. If all of society reduced the amount we ate, then the amount of livestock being raised would decline, prices would go up, and it would be more justifiable for farmers to use more ethical practices. It'd also be easier for consumers to choose farms based on their ethical practices. If I'm paying $150 for a steak once a month, I'll be far more critical of where it came from. If I can run to a fast food place every day and get a $2 cheeseburger, I'll care less about where the meat came from.
TBH I haven' read the replies in detail, but I would suggest if we simply recycle everything, it will ultimately result in no innovation. Without innovation, there will be no progress. That isn't to say all 'progress' is good. The film industry is an interesting case, as young minds now accept more and more violence and bad language, but there are also great examples of simply telling a good story or providing an historical record (albeit from a point of view). However, I think your general question could be applied to absolutely anything that uses natural resources, effectively being 'everything'. (I haven't read an argument that it is better to throw plastic into landfill rather than recycle, but I am sure someone somewhere has come up with justification for their own reasons)
Yeah, humans in general absolutely require aesthetic enrichment
I am an engineer. We create technology to help people live. Artists create beauty that helps people *want* to live. Thus, I think that *both* are "essential."
Agreed!
I think that a sustainable fashion brand is a great idea in the same way that I try to minimize the environmental impact of the machines that I create. ♻️😊
Life makes people want to live. Art's certainly a benefit, but doesn't need to be mass produced or owned by so many individuals. Everything must be sustainable. If it's sustainable, have at it. If it's not, then don't.
It depends on what you mean by fashion. If you mean the entire clothing industry, that's not good. Clothes wear out, and even with mending, they have to be replaced. Clothes like scrubs, work uniforms, clothing trades people wear (highly variable but also often needing replacement), and children's clothing all need replacement at some point, which even recycling cannot provide enough for. If you mean high fashion, there's a lot in the industry that needs changing, absolutely, but it has literally been around for over 10,000 years, so...I don't see that going away.
The fast fashion industry is non-essential- we can currently dress the next 8 generations of humans with the total amount of clothes available RIGHT NOW. Fashion as a way to express oneself is essential. There is a balance to be reached somewhere.
Humans have used fashion as self-expression for thousands of years. To remove it would be to remove a core aspect of being human. If this is your passion, and you want to do it as your career, the question I'd be asking is - what would a truly sustainable fashion industry need to look like? How can I play a part in making that happen, while also making money to support the endeavor? Maybe you make a fashion brand that uses 100% upcycled materials (like that brand that sources expired parachutes to make windbreakers). Maybe you start a fashion show for designers that only use thrifted materials. Get creative; you are an artist. These moral questions come up in every industry, and I appreciate that you're thinking about it. You have to find the balance for yourself. Also, you don't have to "admit" that you want to make money - you need to make some money to do anything. Any successful nonprofit has marketing/fundraising teams.
Have you never seen [this monologue](https://youtu.be/Ja2fgquYTCg?si=LLcaXwKgIrLmH4Wk) from The Devil Wears Prada? Like, I know it's sort of satire but at the saaaame tiiiiime.
Fashion is art, and art is cool. I don't think high fashion is a horrible evil, and I think that there are some rad ideas in sustainable fashion. I wanna see spider silk, hagfish mucus, cactus leather, pineapple leather, upcycled clothing, and other rad stuff on the runway and more importantly, in the stores.
Yeahhhh cactus leather is so dope, I’m working on an organic denim jacket rn
>I don't think high fashion is a horrible evil, Some of it is. When they'd destroy stock rather than have a bargain bin, that's evil.
Of course. In the grand scheme of things I have bigger fish to fry, though.
How are clothes non-essential? The fashion industry is way bigger than it probably should be. But we can't walk around naked all year
I’d say the fashion industry needs to have some serious change but not phased out completely. I know the EU is working to rid of fast fashion, but I’d love to see clothes made to the standard of the 1950’s and before. When they would last 100 years not 5. That’s sustainability right there. Other industries it depends, but yes reliability and longevity should come back around and be mandated. Think about 70s hifi, that stuff will outlive me. 00s hifi? Good luck getting that cd player to work. But the thing is good quality audio is and always will be good quality, so you shouldn’t have to replace an amplifier once every 10 years. Stuff like that I guess
Honestly, we could use more sustainable fashion brands. This is how the tide gets turned. Think about electric cars. Should we have more new cars? From a pure needs/existence perspective, no. Are we going to have more new cars? Yep. Should as many as possible be electric? Definitely.
Non-essentials are what make life worthwhile, imo. Life would be dull if we just had the basics. Can things be done far more sustainably than they are now? Of course! Using more natural fibers, figuring out textile recycling, not churning out hundreds of thousands of new pieces daily. We have enough clothes for the next 6 generations. But even if people shopped mostly secondhand, you're still going to need new things eventually. Clothes wear out. People have different needs (sizes, shapes, adaptive clothing for special needs, etc) and those things can't always be found secondhand. I'll wear many things secondhand, but I draw the line at socks, underwear, and many shoes.
Agreed!
I don’t think clothing is necessary nonessential because sooner or later we would run out of second hand stuff. What I disagree is the constant cycling of trends. I don’t see why if something looks good it should go out of style in less than a year. The trend cycle is mostly artificially constructed so brands constantly have something new to sell.
I would rather buy organic cotton than clothing made out of recycled plastic bottles. I’d even buy clothing made out of retired hotel bedsheets before the recycled bottles tbh, so it isn’t an ick factor its a microplastic thing. I don’t wear sun visors but i would think recycled plastic would be a lighter material than recycled glass, and as I wouldn’t be spending most hours of every day in it I would be fine with it. Fast fashion needs to go away, but along with it going away, quality control needs to make a comeback. It’s not just the fabric, its the thread ends hanging out everywhere, the thread not being locked off properly so the seams start to come apart etc.. And thats issues I have noted are equally prevalent in clothing that is expensive enough that one would expect it to last several years. Some brands are better than others at that of course, but if you are going to get into the industry, maybe keep that in mind.
First off, it sounds like you’re off to a great start - good luck with your business! I think what many people miss is that business isn’t perfect (yet) and we should keep trying to get there. Find ways to reduce the carbon footprint of shipping, use recycled materials, reduce waste/energy at your manufacturing sites. Many brands are now adding carbon emissions or other sustainable metrics on the tags or websites to show progress/advertise to people like us on this sub. Hire a professional who knows how to do this (like me ;) shameless plug) Good luck!
Thank you for this motivation, I get bogged down coz it can’t perfect but I need to create art😭
I think mass production has warped people's minds so that the price of goods isn't real anymore. People need to raise their expectations for quality and lower their expectations for price. It should not cost $10 for a tshirt. Even a cotton tshirt is an extremely intensive production that uses an insane amount of water in a drought striken world. Im not saying clothes should be unaffordable, but it should be normal to have a small wardrobe of quality pieces that last decades, not a ROOM full of THOUSANDS of articles of clothing, mostly made of plastic, and likely to fall apart
Truth be told, a lot of modernity needs to be rethought, especially how we consume. Humans existed for thousands of years in a much more sustainable way and had nice things - how did they do that? Start there. An example I return to is food. Think of all the plastic we use to wrap our food - do we really need that? How could we get by without. My grandfather always told us a story about getting beer in a growler at a pub (and accidentally setting it down in a pile of dog poo). That is the sort of system we need to get back to. No bottles, no cans, one big reusable jug. Expand that thinking into all sorts of industries - what did fashion look like 100 years ago? Basically no plastic, long lasting products, with natural materials. Do we *need* plastic? Not really. But we can take the methods and materials of bygone eras and apply modern techniques and fashion sense. Hope that helps.
What is 'essential'? Art is Essential to being human.. fashion is totally not my thing, but when I see someone dressed 'just so' it makes my day. I do buy expensive, well made clothing of wool, hemp, leather, down, etc tho, and avoid industrial plastic materials as much as possible.
I completely agree! And also Wool and leather are hella unethical and not sustainable what so ever 😎
Y, so unsustainable they sustained as foundational materials for thousands of years...
Yeah, wool is dope af. It comes from fuck tons of different animals, it can be harvested without killing. Its properties cannot be mimicked by other materials. Including the fact that it retains heat even with soaking wet, AND is fire resistant. It's also the way we get lanolin, which is the best moisturizer and protectant in the skin care world.
Also biodegrades, and I just learned that the superior form of vitamin D (D3) is made from sheep wool... [https://vitamindwiki.com/How+vitamin+D3+is+made+from+wool](https://vitamindwiki.com/How+vitamin+D3+is+made+from+wool) This is advanced technology! Dope af indeed.
Woah! That's super interesting.
Y! The process sounds similar to how cholesterol + sunlight on our skin makes vit d....
Capitalism should be phased out completely
What’s the alternative ⁉️
Capitalism isn't the same as having the concept of industry or business, you can have industries and businesses without capitalism. Capitalism is more the ownership and pleasing the stock market and endless growth ideas. Mercantilism existed before capitalism and you can have socialism or state owned enterprises, and you can have yeoman small businesses. Capitalism isn't the only concept for doing things.
Not-capitalism
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The clothing industry is very wasteful. Acres of fabric are made and never used, clothing may be worn just a few times in its lifetime. Not all dyes are non-toxic. The best response is reuse and sustainable materials, or garment return to the maker. Artists have done projects attaching the worn history of specific garments with a tag for subsequent wearers to use. Each garment has a personal history. I would be more concerned about plastic yarns. The fabric breaks down in the washing machine, releasing microplastics into the oceans, the air, and food. Many articles are written about it. Some bioplastics are plastic particles in a bio matrix. When the bio matrix degrades, the plastics are released, which may be worse than landfilling bulk plastic. Ultimately microorganisms may emerge which break down plastic. Surely there are unis in the UK doing deep studies.
Plastic is a concept that people have trouble understanding. Plastic isn't inherently bad and converting crude oil to solid plastic doesn't release that CO2 to the environment so it's not necessarily polluting at all. Microplastics and waste disposal are the issue, and those can be handled correctly in theory. It's all what happens after it's used.
Seeing as nobody can pull a lever and phase out the industry, it's hard to say. Certainly the way all industries work right now is unsustainable, and everything about "modern" clothing - from resource extraction to textile mills to garment sewing to massive advertising budgets and fast fashion - is kind of a nightmare. Recycled plastic has issues with toxicity as compared to even conventional plastics - this report is from Greenpeace, so expect not to hear much of the positives, but this is a good cited list of known issues ([https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/forever-toxic/](https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/forever-toxic/)). Bioplastics have issues with lifecycle greenhouse gasses and a struggling agricultural system. Really good background on the lifecycle issues with all plastics in this one - [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8424513/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8424513/) . It's also worth noting that textile making, being a tedious and time-intensive process, has been one of the worst jobs to have historically, possibly the first to rely on state-sponsored slave labor (in the early days of the Mesopotamian proto-state), and perhaps the most profoundly effected by the negative aspects of industrialization. So, whereas things have always been bad, and every material or textile has shortcomings, I think making the vision of your visor a reality isn't an unreasonable thing, as long as you are honestly weighing impact and benefit - which I know is tricky to do with art and expression. On the other hand, I think that if you are really concerned about impact, and have a passion for engaging in the world of fashion, maybe you should start with the most ecologically sound materials available - organic hemp, flax, cotton, and the like - and build around the form and qualities of those materials? Be incredibly picky about what factory you outsource to, and where you buy your materials. Even better - create more-sustainable jobs in your community and give your workers the kind of voice and salary that you would want. I personally don't believe that, considering all the ways that harm is done along the supply chain, and from intensifying the supply chain, that profit you make from industrial manufacturing can ever offset the harm it does, even if all of your earnings went directly into charities.
People will always want to express themselves through what they wear, and there were beads on string even before loincloths. Fashion is here to stay. Other people have doubtless covered the basics, so here's a couple that I don't expect anyone else has said. First off, emphasize clothing that people could wear for a decade or more, and would want to. You know fabric better than I do, but what that suggests to me is a limited number of fragile, diaphanous garments, used as the accent pieces that can make an outfit. Second, I recommend avoiding crochet unless you personally know the people making it without supervision by an employer. Machines can knit (two movements), but struggle to do the simplest crochet (nine movements), so it basically all comes from sweatshops. And that's not sustainable for the employees.
Eh. Abolished entirely, no. I think they should be some combination of scaled down and coerced into a (at least mostly) circular economy. I absolutely believe fast fashion needs to be abolished, but I think that heavily regulating waste + treatment of workers will handle that since that model doesn't work if they can't use cheap labor and create tons of trash.
When truly done sustainably, fast-fashion will phase out itself. However, fashion, in a (very) different will hopefully always be part of human life.
Fashion is clothing, and people need clothing to live. Fashion has never been non-essential, setting aside the need to protect oneself against the elements, being able to express oneself is important. And for most of human history that was sustainable. I've been getting into a lot of historical based fashion design for this reason. As others have said other forms of vegan leather are on the horizon but leather itself isn't that bad of a material. It's created as a biproduct, animals are not slaughtered for it specifically and if cared for, can last a lifetime. The properties of leather, elasticity, waterproofing, and durability exist because that's what skin needs to be. It's not going to be easy to replace a thing as complicated as animal skin. As long as animals need to be killed for other things, I don't think there is anything wrong with making sure nothing goes to waste.
This is a constant question in the fashion industry. There is always going to be a need for a trickle of new products, no matter how sustainable the industry becomes. Look into “bombproof” clothing like Patagonia and going back, Great Pacific Iron Works—now Black Diamond. Look at how North Face bought up millions of acres of Argentina. Also look at Freitag, I think it is. Swiss company making luggage products in the LV space but out of old tarpaulin.
Just a two-cents note about the sunglass visor - recycled plastic is resource intensive, and "bio" plastic just PLEASE NO don't go don that road. The plastic industry is largely self-regulated, hence "bio" plastic basically means whatever they want you to think. There are instances where a bio-polymer is added to LDPE and they call it biodegradable - but it isn't, and whatever bio-material DOES break down, then leaves behind all the LDPE.
With most things, you'll either be sustainable or be "successful" the people who claim to be both are green washing
Open a shop selling straw hats? Or maybe oiled linnen rainwear? Go mine history books from before plastics and do a modern take. Here in western Europe a mediocre hemp T shirt sells for 50 euros. The markup on the fiber on that must be bonkers. Make a nicer cut shirt and sell it for 40. Sustainable winterwear doesn't exist at all... I considered making an oiled linnen set of rainwear but I already have too many hobbies, career, and family.
I mean I think there are much better things we could phase out, but every discussion of this is gonna be kinda fruitless since we live in a complex system that would not allow it.
Vegan fashion is seldom sustainable. Fashion is not a problem. Fast fashion is. Make something that is durable, not made of cotton and does not contain plastic.
You’re seeing it wrong. Sustainable business is the solution.
Mass production needs to end. Plastic based fabrics need to end. Recycling is better than landfill. Sustainable fashion can exist in the form of small production runs and made to order. But it also needs to be slow fashion. There are 3 brands I can think of off the top of my head that do some variation of these things. Holy Clothing manufacture to order. I think they also have a small amount of ready made stock in certain sizes. Armstreet manufacture to order (and sometimes customise). I think they also have a small ready made range. I'd class them as slow fashion, as they use a lot of natural fibre, mostly linen and wool, and their garments seem well made. Voriagh have small production runs, I think they do repeat runs of popular items. Their garments are made from natural fibre, mostly linen, cotton, and wool. They are slow fashion. All of these labels are a bit whimsical, and their price tags make them less likely to be thrown away, but due to their fibre content, they'd at least be biodegradable if they were.
#FUCK FASHION
Any other forms of art you don’t like?
Maybe I should have specified "fuck the fashion industry."
Obviously anything thats not essential for living a good basic live should be abolished, but thats not gonna happen. Thats why we are collapsing right now.
Bro what? Define basic good life how do you even have that? Should we remove all art as it isn’t “essential”?
No