N the Red 13
Arts & Culture
Eco-friendly style
Fashion pushes toward environmental, social change Hayley Brown
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brownhay000@hsestudents.org
ustainable fashion is the movement of Hayley fostering change to fashion products Brown brownand the fashion system toward greater hay000@hsestuecological integrity and social justice. The dents.org0 movement has made a return and features across many media platforms. As of right now, the fashion industry is the second largest polluter with the oil industry rac ing up as the first polluter in the world. Besides focusing on environmental awareness, sustainable fashion companies advocate for the millions of labor forces working for the fashion industry. “Sustainable fashion, in my opinion, is as effective as recycling or reusing,” senior Keely Gott said. In the 1980s, clothing brands such as Patagonia and Esprit began to advertise their clothing as sustainable” as part of an effort to reduce the fashion industry’s carbon footprint. However, sustainable fashion producers are unable to push toward greater environmental efforts ithout the buyers or supporters of these clothing brands. “I think sustainable fashion is really useful and something that is upcoming and many people are starting to look at it,” junior Shelby Cade said. “I believe it’s very similar to regular manufactured clothing and it’s a sensible use of clothing.” Not only is sustainable fashion supporting environmental change, but change for the fashion industry’s labor workers. One in six people work in the fashion industry, but 2% are given a living wage. Many fashion manufacturers disclose the conditions of the environment employees work in to cover distress with a brand name according to the Human Rights Watch website. “The situations labor workers are put in will be
better because of the support from the efforts of sustainable fashion companies,” Cade said. “The efforts and the improvements from those efforts can be looked upon from outsiders.” Women make up the majority of the 163 million population of labor workers in the fashion industry. The Sustain Your Style website states a variety of women live day by day in rigorous situations owing to the closeted actions of the industry’s superiors. Unpaid maternity leave, sexual harassment, retaliation towards employees and forced overtime hours make up these closeted actions. “It seems these sustainable fashion companies are bringing many positives to the fashion industry, including the support of the employees who work for the companies. It could better the image of fashion than the negativity it’s received on the daily,” Gott said. Many people are concerned with the environmental toxicity that the fashion industry contributes to. According to the Human Rights Watch website, clothing stores such as H&M and Zara taint large bodies of ater ith microfibers, produce greenhouse emissions and contribute to deforestation of major rainforests to make plastic materials. “Sustainable fashion is a small thing we can do to reduce pollution and is more effective than recycling because items that are assumed to be recycled, are mostly getting thrown away,” junior Sebastian Trujillo said. Ecological fashion companies try to persevere through these damages of the fashion industry by producing clothing with greener alternatives, such as using raw denim to produce jean clothing. “Rather than wearing used clothes from thrift stores, I’m able to buy new clothes that are close to my style and offer clothing better for the environment from local sustainable clothing stores such as Anthropologie,” Cade said.
Mannequin from Anthropologie displays fashion pieces using ecological materials, representing the sustainable fashion movement. Photo by Hayley Brown.
