How to produce a
culturally and ecologically friendly
fashion collection Step by step
STEP 1 DECIDE AN INSPIRATION Do your research on which culture interests you and it’s fashion history so you can get a general context on how to start sketching your collection.
STEP 2 Differentiate Cultural Appropriation from Appreciation Make sure to research whether the things you are getting inspiration from don’t have an important religious or historic meaning to the culture. Basically get the context around if it’s morally correct for the original creator for you to use certain parts of their identity in order to produce clothing.
STEP 3 DECIDE THE Manufacturing process of the collection In order to be culturally and ecologically friendly you should come to terms on how big you will make your collection (how many units are you planning to sell). This way you can narrow your options for manufacturing and resource obtaining processes.
Also, this is the perfect opportunity to give back to the culture that inspired you, they can be the manufacturers for your collection. If they agree, they could get payed for enhancing their culture, have in mind that therefore there wouldn’t be many units available; this has two main consequences: ● One is that it would make it a more exclusive collection due to its rarity, which allows you to raise the prices and give a better profit to the community that helped you produce it. ● And the other one is that this would lower all the resources needed to produce it, adding to the ecologically friendly characteristic. In which case you prefer to produce the collection in a factory, look for sustainable alternative materials that maintain the essence of the culture’s traditionally used materials.
STEP 4 OVERSEAS SELLING IMPLICATIONS Lastly, in case you want to sell the garments overseas, balance the implications of production amount and transportation, because let’s say you produce something on Brazil, the most ecological option would be to sell it on Brazil, but if you want to sell it on Paris for example, maybe producing less would lower the consequences that the environment receives due to transportation.
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