EARTH FIRST The Future of Textile Manufacture

More than 15 years ago I wrote for Selvedge about ecological fashion and textiles. As part of the 100th issue anniversary, it seems the right time to pause and reflect on what has altered and what has endured in the world of fibre, clothing, fashion and the interconnected global ecological systems that are part of all our lives. Re-reading the 2005 piece brings a nostalgic smile. The article was hopeful and inspired by ideas of local, holistic change; change that seemed inevitable, as it was in the collective interest and thus, logical. Yet today the outlook for global planetary health is poor and getting worse. Feelings of optimism are tainted with sadness and frustration for the fashion and textiles sector’s lack of profound change. Today the fashion, textiles and sustainability complex is a hotbed of activity, an industry in itself. It includes initiatives ranging from crossbrand projects to raise standards across global supply chains to a new appreciation of fashionsustainability considered from wide-ranging worldviews; from innovative design concepts to new roles for the media; from an evolution in terminology to online shopping sustainability filters. In the fashion and textiles business sustainability has entered both industry and public consciousness. This has resulted in an unprecedented acceptance of sustainability as a system of ideas. Other industries, such as that of food, view fashion as a testing ground of sustainability transformation. Special interest is paid to whether the fashion industry can address its profoundly problematic relationship with excess, rapid product obsolescence and consumption. Yet even from within the excitement of this current wave of sustainability-focused activity, there is little evidence of positive, systemic change. Data suggests that despite decades of scientific inquiry, industry initiatives, academic research and design intelligence, the cumulative environmental impact of the fashion and textiles industry is steadily increasing. Despite our best efforts, things are getting worse. To avert catastrophic climate change huge numbers of us must embrace necessary shifts in behaviour. It is vital to pause to understand and reflect on how we got here and then make rapid changes. The primary reasons why levels of environmental impact across the fashion and textile industry have shown no net reduction are due to the underlying purpose of these sectors being set to economic growth. With such a precondition, growth is a structural requirement. The better the sector performs, the worse the consequences – drawdown of resources, pollution and waste – will be. Any attempts to mitigate the negative effects of this growth logic are continuously hampered by the growth of the industry itself. Both environmental impacts and the limits to addressing those impacts are baked in. Faster adoption of the same solutions won’t work either, as they are based on a capitalist system of over production based on uninterrupted growth. In order for real transformation, we must structure our systems to operate within the limits of the planet’s boundaries. So where do we go from here? The short answer is to change the purpose of the fashion system, one that puts earth, and all its species – including humans – first. Mathilda Tham and I put forward one such vision in our Earth Logic: Fashion Action Research Plan, and there are others – this plurality matters. The Earth Logic Action Research Plan for fashion is a visionary and radical invitation to researchers, practitioners and decision makers to call out as fiction the idea that sustainability can be achieved within a growth centred business. Instead, it invites a vision of a fashion industry connected with nature, people and long term healthy futures. It does this by placing the earth before profit, before everything. This is simple and yet it changes everything, The scale and speed of change required means that genuinely systemic efforts are needed. In the fashion and textiles context this means addressing not only the environmental impact of a fashion product and the processes of making it, but also the interconnected systems including the psychology behind fashion use, our systems of economics, finance and trade, how we fashion local and global infrastructures around clothing and how we construct meaningful lives and livelihoods. Rethinking fashion outside the economic growth model shifts power from4

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