THE FIRST TO BE RESPONSIBLE

By: Jess Montgomery

There is a line in Bruno Latour’s book Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime (2018), that summarizes the great responsibility the global apparel industry holds in leading the way towards a model of sustainable production and consumption. Down to Earth is a short book that, like much of Latour’s work, is simple in concept and complex in approach. In it, the French philosopher grapples with what he sees as the connecting force between issues of inequality, deregulation, and globalization – namely a powerful sect of the population no longer feels it is beholden to the ruse that we are all equal, all commonly connected. In response, Latour argues for a return to Earth, for policies and political actions that are Earth-focused, rather than nationalistic or geared towards the abstract ‘global.’ In the final pages of the book, as Latour works through his vision of a plausible way forward, he states that “Europe, because of its history, has to plunge in first because it was the first to be responsible” (Latour 2018:104). Sociologist Juliet Schor states that clothing is at “the cutting edge of a set of unsustainable consumer practices” (Schor 2010:27). The global fashion industry is a poster child for the values that have powered the global economic system through to the 21st century and holds a responsibility to lead the way in reprioritizing values that support a just and equitable system of production and consumption.

The global fashion industry is a poster child for the values that have powered the global economic system through to the 21st century and holds a responsibility to lead the way in reprioritizing values that support a just and equitable system of production and consumption.

By this point, the detrimental impacts of the global apparel industry are rote: this is an industry that is responsible for 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions; it is heavily reliant on fossil fuels, from the petrochemicals used to manufacture synthetic textiles and fabric dyes, and the plastic that ships garments around the globe, to the gas and oil used to power transportation; it is responsible for 20% of annual plastic production; the chemicals used to dye, treat, and set textiles are often highly toxic, harming the individuals who work directly with them, but also contaminating local water systems and thus negatively impacting the land, the humans, and the living creatures who ingest this water or foods grown with the water; the industry also consumes vast amounts of fresh water (to grow cotton, treat textiles and so on) and contributes to soil degradation and the decimation of precious rainforests (Geneva Environment Network 2021). In North America, 10.5 million tonnes of textiles (including clothing but also other household and commercial textiles) are thrown out every year (Waste Reduction Week in Canada 2022), which not only adds to the Earth’s massive waste problem, but renders all the environmental harm caused in producing all these clothes entirely pointless. When it comes to major industries that are harming the planet, the fashion industry is one of the worst. Moreover, it is an industry that we all participate in, which means we are all complicit.

In Down to Earth, Latour refers to the responsibility Europe holds, as the harbinger of an imperial worldview that encouraged inequality and the urge to colonize, to lead the way in enacting what a society that prioritizes equity and upholds social and environmental justice can look like. As a primary actor in creating the current system – which, according to Latour’s argument, is not working – Latour suggests that Europe holds the majority share of the burden of creating a new system. A counter argument would suggest that Europe’s time is over, and instead we should look to the communities that have been silenced for our models of what a new system could look like. But, I empathize with Latour’s argument because, to me, it speaks to a basic concept of fairness. When we are children, we are taught to clean

up our messes, to admit when we are wrong, to apologize and make amends when we have hurt someone. Since the fashion industry is one of our most polluting industries that has led the way in modeling what an unsustainable system of production and consumption looks like, does it not hold the majority share of responsibility to reimagine what a fair and ethical system of production and consumption could look like?

If the fashion industry is one of our most polluting industries, that has led the way in modeling what an unsustainable system of production and consumption looks like, does it not hold the majority share of responsibility to reimagine what a fair and ethical system of production and consumption could look like?

The linear model of “take, make, use, lose” (Raworth 2017:181) is not unique to the apparel industry, but rather describes the contemporary relationship to industrial output in general. However, fashion can, in many ways, be used to exemplify this model. As Juliet Schor describes, the concept of fashion, meaning goods that can become undesirable due to their style or because they have become “too widely available” (Schor 2010:31), has overtaken the market, where fashion now plays an important role in the desirability of everyday objects from “the pencil holder on the desk to the teapot on the stove, never mind the cell phone, its case, and its ringtone.” (Schor 2010:31). The role that fashion has in the movement of everyday objects is part of what Schor terms ‘the materiality paradox,’ in which consumer goods have become more widely available to more and more people, therefore “the goods themselves become less important, and their social meaning more salient, [while] their physical or material impact on the planet intensifies” (Schor 2010:27). Schor argues as consumer goods themselves have become increasingly disposable, their symbolic meaning has become the thing that holds actual value. But this value is determined by the whims of fashion which, paradoxically, we participate in because it communicates our access to wealth through our ability to be wasteful.

When we talk about the negative environmental impacts of the fashion industry on this planet, we are talking about the relationship

between humans and the Earth, but, more specifically, we are talking about the likelihood that we will be able to limit global temperature-rise to 1.5oC. We care about greenhouse gas emissions, soil degradation and water contamination because these things determine whether or not we will meet the goals that will make climate change survivable. We measure this temperature rise against “pre-industrial” temperatures, so temperatures before the Industrial Revolution. There were many factors that contributed to the emergence of the Industrial Revolution, including the invention of the steam engine and the adoption of the use of coal (Meadows 2004:267). One of the most significant factors was the step away from cottage industries to factory production, aided by the invention of various machines that upped efficiency and productivity. One of the industries that was most affected was the textile industry, where “in the space of a little more than 40 years, from 1733 through 1775, innovations such as the flying shuttle, spinning jenny, [the] water-powered spinning frame and cotton carding machines [announced] the age of mechanized production was launched” (Lavergne 2015:25). The Industrial Revolution is credited as the beginning of a turn towards technology as the most effective fix-all, but it also marked a psychological turn. Commerce was offered as the solution to humanity’s ills, “the capitalists […] promised that, through the technological domination of the earth, they could deliver a more fair, rational, efficient and productive life for everyone.” (Donald Worster quoted in Meadows 2004:268). With the textile industry leading the way, the Industrial Revolution mechanized production, thus increasing the amount of textiles that could be produced, but also introducing the mass-manufacturing of garments themselves. Next came the invention of synthetic dyes and the proliferation of department stores, and the former middle-class could start affording more fashionable clothing with greater regularity.

These were the early days of increased access to fashion goods for many in the Global North. Where those who lived a generation beforehand would have been dressed in hand-medowns, people could now, suddenly, afford to buy themselves something new and reasonably fashionable. There is a tendency to create a relationship of cause and effect between access and consumption and think people began to desire more because more was made available to them. However, as Frank Trentmann illustrates in his exhaustive global history of consumption, the desire for things is almost untraceable since it has so long been a part of the human experience (2017:21-173). We are desiring beings, so while greater access may encourage greater depths of desire, the access itself does not create the desire. As Dana Thomas writes, “In Europe, most reigning monarchy had been abolished, but not the aspiration to emulate it” (2007:25).

Limits imposed upon an individual’s ability to consume due to economic disparity is felt as a failure, a shame, a profound slight to one’s dignity

The desire for things (and now, increasingly, for the lifestyles) that those above our own status possess has not left us. J.B. MacKinnon describes an American study into which brands were considered the most ‘high-status’ in the 2010s. Including Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Rolex, Chanel, Prada, Armani and Versace in the top ten, the study found that “those brands are more often mentioned on social media in parts of the United States that have wider gaps between rich and poor” (MacKinnon 2021:102). Tansy E. Hoskins describes the looting of clothing and shoe shops that accompanied riots that swept Britain in 2011. The riots, prompted by “police violence, social exclusion, poverty [...] illustrate the tense disconnect between society’s messages. People are taught: “I shop, therefore I am,” that shopping equals success and that they should go to any length to consume” (Hoskins 2014:51-52). The ability to consume has become tied to an individual’s sense of self-worth. Consequently, limits imposed upon an individual’s ability to consume due to economic disparity is felt as a failure, a shame, a profound slight to one’s dignity. It is also representative of a social and economic system in which some individuals will never be able to access the very thing society tells them they are owed, that which they require to be seen, by themselves and by others, as successful. This kind of looting, particularly of goods that hold high symbolic value, is not uncommon, and was seen again during the protests that ripped across the United States following George Floyd’s murder in 2020.

In the late 1990s and into the early 2000s, the apparel industry began its ‘race to the bottom’ in which manufacturing jobs (including cotton farming) were rapidly transferred out of North American and Europe and into the developing

nations (Lavergne 2015:34-73). This is a supply chain practice now common among most apparel brands, from fast-fashion to high-end designer. As Kate Fletcher writes, “just as the textile industry led the Industrial Revolution, fashion and textiles have been among the first sectors to be part of today’s international division of labour. […] Apparel companies largely have moved their manufacturing facilities from industrialized to lower-wage countries overseas, resulting in an already complex supply chain now having a wide geographic spread” (2014:168). This was presented as a win-win by parent companies; countries in the Global South would be raised out of poverty thanks to the economic boom that industry provides, and consumers in the Global North would reap the rewards through lowered purchase prices (Lavergne 2015:34-73). Sustainable fashion advocate, Aja Barber, begins her book Consumed (2021) with an open letter to the CEOs of fast-fashion retailers in which she demands that they take personal accountability for the social and environmental harms their companies engender upon the world (Barber 2021:ix). Her letter gives voice to a growing area of concern around responsibility. For while the traditional argument lobbied by industry suggests we, the consumers, made our choices known when we took advantage of these lowered prices by upping our consumption levels by over 400% (Sustain Your Style 2022), citizens like Aja Barber are raising their voices in dissent. In the debate between individual responsibility versus corporate responsibility, wherein one party holds all the information and actively obscures this information through slick greenwashing campaigns, can it truly be said that there is a fair playing field?

In the debate between individual responsibility versus corporate responsibility, wherein one party holds all the information and actively obscures this information through slick greenwashing campaigns, can it truly be said that there is a fair playing field?

In many ways the textile and apparel industry has led the major trends in the manufacturing industries, from the mechanization of production, to the adoption of communications technology that allowed jobs to be exported to the Global South. From an increased access of goods for a growing percentage of the population, to the social shift that prioritizes symbolic value over use value, the fashion industry has a dangerously large footprint and plays a significant role in perpetuating the causes of climate change. It has also provided the blueprint for a deeply unsustainable model of production and consumption, which other industries have adopted. The fashion industry, therefore, holds an extra burden of responsibility to not only correct its unethical and unsustainable practices, but more significantly, to lead the way towards a model for the 21st century, wherein the objects we produce and consume do good by people and the planet.

Bibliography

• Barber, Aja. Consumed: The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change and Consumerism. London, Brazen, 2021. • Charpail, Mathilde. “What’s Wrong with the Fashion Industry?” Sustain Your Style. 2017. www.sustainyourstyle.org/en/whats-wrongwith-the-fashion-industry. Accessed 10 June 2022. • “Environmental Sustainability in the Fashion Industry.” Geneva Environment Network. 19 November 2021. www.genevaenvironmentnetwork.org/resources/updates/sustainable-fashion/. Accessed 10 June 2022. • Fletcher, Kate. Design Journeys: Sustainable Fashion and Textiles. 2nd Edition. London, Routledge, 2014. • Hoskins, Tansy E. Stitched-Up: The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion. London, Pluto Press, 2014. • Latour, Bruno. Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climactic Regime. Translated by Catherine Porter. Cambridge, Polity Press, 2017. • Lavergne, Michael. Fixing Fashion: Rethinking the Way We Make, Market and Buy Our Clothes. Gabriola Island, New Society Publishers, 2015. • MacKinnon, J.B. The Day the World Stops Shopping. Toronto, Random House Canada, 2021. • Meadows, Donella, Jorgen Randers and Dennis Meadows. Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update. White River Junction, Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2004. • Raworth, Kate. Doughnut Economics: 7 Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist. White River Junction, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2017. • Schor, Juliet B. Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth. New York, The Penguin Press, 2010. • “Textiles Tuesday.” Waste Reduction Week in Canada. wrwcanada.com/en/theme-days/textiles-tuesday. Accessed 10 June 2022. • Thomas, Dana. Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster. New York, Penguin Books, 2007. • Trentmann, Frank. Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-first. London, Penguin Books UK, 2017.

Bio:

Jess Montgomery is a Vancouver-based writer, educator and public speaker. She holds a BFA with Distinction in Art History from Concordia University and a MA in the History and Theory of Contemporary Art from San Francisco Art Institute. Jess’s work focuses on the intersection between material culture, consumption and climate change; her 2019 talk for TEDxCHilliwack focused on the social and environmental impacts of clothing overconsumption.