The slow fashion movement comes with increasing strength in the industry as an alternative to dress well
“Clothes are our chosen skin”. For the author of this phrase, the fashion designer Orsola de Castro, what we wear is the way we communicate to the world with colors, textures and cuts before we even speak. But each outfit also brings its own history: where and by whom it was made, cost of production, quality of the material and environmental and social impacts made into the clothes get to the person that bought it. The aspects are discussed in the documentary “The True Cost” (2015), directed by Andrew Morgan, especially when it refers to fast fashion industry, clothing market sector that produces a lot with low cost. “The fast culture, for many years, monopolized the way of consuming. To have what is considered trend is the goal of fashion and design lovers. Standards are seen as the only way to be beautiful and disseminated through social media, without any regards towards which is he best choice for each individual”, says the Brazilian fashion designer Mana Malta, founder of the store Orgânica. “But the culture of boundless consuming has caused more impact than it was expected and the world calls for the culture of self knowledge and ethical consuming.”
The expression fast fashion emerged about two decades ago, when the big brands started to offer new products in its shelves and racks with more and more frequency. “Instead of two seasons [Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter], we have practically 52 seasons per year. So, we have something new coming every week. And the fast fashion created it to change more the products”, explains the British journalist Lucy Siegle in interview to the documentary. She and other people interviewed to the documentary show the fast fashion causes three major impacts. First, environmental: to supply the materials faster, they have to shorten the process of production of raw material like cotton, with planting and harvesting cycles shorter and in large scale, using genetically modified seeds, pesticides and other highly toxic inputs to human health and soil. Then, there is the impact of the production of fabrics and clothing. Today, almost 98% of the clothes bought in the United States, as in a large part of the whole world – including Brazil – are made in developing or emerging countries, like Bangladesh, India and China. The main reason, as highlighted in the documentary, is the precariousness of the labor laws on those countries. The great brands sign contracts with the fabrics that charge less to produce the clothes and, consequently, the cuts are made on wages and working conditions. Low wages, no vacations, buildings with no fire exits and extinguishers, dyeing clothes in places without sanitation and without protective clothing for workers are some items from the extensive list of problem with this production model. The third is the low cost/benefit for buyers, that purchase “trend” clothes with no quality and poor durability for prices apparently more affordable.
Who pays the price of fast fashion
Savar, suburb of Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh. The morning of April 24, 2013. The workers of the building known as Rana Plaza had told the owner of the place about the possibility of a collapse. Yet, he made all of them to work that day. At 8:45 am, local time, the building collapsed, killing 1.127 people e leaving 2.500 injured. Every year, landslides, fires and other incidents caused by bad infrastructure happen in textile industries. However, the international media's attention turned to this issue when it happened the largest disaster of fashion industry until today, the Rana Plaza, where about 5.000 people worked in four fabrics as well as shops and other establishments.
“You need something like the disaster, the murder that was Rana Plaza to really think about it and reveal that there is people at the other end of the supply chain”, Livia Firth, creative director of Eco Age, a consulting agency of ethics and sustainability. In her speech at the environmental panel of Copenhagen Fashion Summit 2014, an international symposium about sustainable development in the fashion industry, the self-described "social agitator" described fast fashion on the perspective of three major impacts. “I never separate the environmental justice from social justice; and if you take fast fashion from the environmental perspective, you can use as much organic cotton as you want, but you'll be creating a huge pile of rubbish. […] On the point of view of social justice, for the garment workers it will never work, because fast fashion wants to produce fast, so the garment worker has to produce faster and cheap, so the garment worker is the only point of the supply chain where the margins are squeezed. And you have these huge companies going to the factories in Bangladesh, make an order to 1.5 million jeans for 30 cents each, 50 cents each. How can you make it ethical?”, asked Firth. “I don't know.”
Last but not least important, “from the consumer point of view, is it really democratic to buy a T-shirt for five dollars and a pair of jeans for 20 dollars or are they taking us for a right? They are making us believe that we are rich or wealthy because we can buy a lot, but in fact they are making us poorer and the only person who is becoming richer is the owner of the fast fashion brand”, explained Firth.
Stylish alternatives
The incident of Rana Plaza gave more strength to a movement that was already growing as an alternative to fast fashion, the slow fashion. From it was born initiatives like the international organization Fashion Revolution, to raise awareness about the impact of fashion industry and open space to designers and initiatives that use natural, organic and recycled materials. One example is Orgânica Moda Ecológica, brand that was created as a result of the designer Mana Malta’s final project in college, in Itaipava, Rio de Janeiro. “My theme was about the humanity and the nature as a way to freedom and the artists of the 1970’s based on organic architecture and its sinuous forms, transposing it to fashion, in the sense that the clothes must fit the body, not the other way around”, explains Malta. Her clothes are produced with organic cotton, from controlled source and with certification of being chemical additives free; super resistent national silk; recycled cotton, "it’s a fiber easily found in the waste disposal of clothing in trash, about tons are collected and remanufactured and sewed again", she explains; recycled plastic soda bottles collected by cooperatives of rubbish collectors and sewed in polyester thread; and bamboo, which is not considered a natural fabric, it passes by chemical processes during spinning, but it is still a low impact option and has bacteriostatic and anti ultraviolet properties. "Most sustainable textiles are imported, the national organic cotton has not yet reached acceptable levels of supply, being very scarce and vulnerable to losses", complements Malta.
Another alternative is the use of retail fabrics, as made by the brand Lusco Fusco, of the designer Deborah Schmidt Nardello. Her career in sustainable fashion began in the Clothing Bank, a union of several entities of Caxias de Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, her hometown and where she graduated in Fashion Design. The Bank was born to give a correct destination to the waste created by the textile industry - scraps, trimmings and other materials that would otherwise be discarded by factories - such as donating, recycling or the use of the courses in the locality. "It was in the Clothing Bank that I began to see and understand the proportion of textile industry’s waste and I began to think of a solution for all those materials. Those were new textiles, beautiful, and I did not believe that the garbage had to be the final destination for many cool materials”, remembers Nardello. In 2013, the designer moved to Rio de Janeiro and created her brand with clothes made with scraps left over from clothing, to extend the life of these tissues and prevent them end up in landfills.
Fashion Revolution in Brazil
For those who want to understand more about ethical and sustainable fashion, the documentary The True Cost is available on Netflix. To search for more initiatives, the movement Fashion Revolution, present in the social medias Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, makes available free of charge on its website the e-book “#Haulternative: a guide to fashion lovers”. There is also the Moda Livre (“Free Fashion”) app, created by the NGO Reporter Brazil, which evaluates the working conditions of garment workers of the country's leading apparel retailers and is available for Android and iPhone. In turn, the collective Roupa Livre (“Free Clothing”) seeks to educate people to have a new look at your clothes instead of leaving simply buying new. Among its products highlights the Mapa da Mina (“treasure map”), with the location of thrift shops, seamstresses, places for donation, sewing courses and other collective fashion across the country. The Roupa Livre also digitally released the book tips Guia Roupa Livre (“Free Guide Clothing”), available in Portuguese at the price that each person wants to pay. Among the spaces for discussion, also highlights the fair O Mercado - Estilistas Independentes (“The Market - Independent Fashion Designers”) that since 2010, brings together designers, designers, artists, craftsmen, fashion miners, chefs, curators, designers and decorators at an event in Rio de January with original products and the most affordable. The common goal is the search for better life quality. And in the neighborhood Consolação in Sao Paulo, the Lab Fashion is a coworking office where fashion professionals pay a fee to have access to space and materials, from sewing machines and mannequins, to studios recording and photography, to work on their projects.
