You can’t change the fashion industry but you can tell them that you care
Unfortunately, buying sustainable fashion that makes you feel good is not as easy as it may sound. When you go shopping in an average shopping street, fair and green fashion is hard to find and it is difficult to tell which brands are doing better than others. To change this, we need to talk about it! We need to start a new conversation within society and we must tell fashion brands that we want them to produce in a different way and be transparent about their impact.
We often feel powerless and unable to make a difference. However, it is us, the consumers, who decide where we spend our money. And with great power comes great responsibility. We can’t change the fashion industry, but we can tell them that we care. We can ask question on how things are made and show that we prefer fair fashion. Social media are the perfect place to do that. Any industry watches closely the trends and expectation of their customers on social media.
Green and fair fashion must become the norm
The good news for consumers who care is that there are already many small brands truly committed to very high social and environmental standards. These brands still operate in a niche and it is sometimes difficult to find them. Many are only available online. That is an additional barrier if you don’t know the brand yet and can’t judge the quality, colour or sizes without being able to try and feel. The people working for these sustainable fashion brands often have a deep, intrinsic motivation to save the world. And that is fantastic. That is what gets them to do their job every day. Sometimes that is also how they communicate. And by doing so they limit themselves to a small consumer segment that shares their ambition and values. If we seriously want to change the world, green and fair fashion needs to grow out of this niche and become mainstream.
Therefore, my recommendation to sustainable fashion brands is: Make it about the consumer rather than about saving the world. Look around what other industries have achieved. Take organic food for instance. Organic food has been there forever. It only succeeded to grow out of its tiny ideological niche when it started being a lifestyle rather than about saving the world. Today organic products are on the shelves of all supermarkets and organic has become mainstream for certain products. Let’s do the same with fashion.
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