A Fashion Trend the Earth Would Love to see in 2024

I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of trends. How we go through cycles of what is deemed aesthetic or flattering, and in a day, our minds can completely switch, left wondering how we ever dared put on a garment like that. Now, clothing production has doubled, but the life of the garments has shortened. This issue is the reality of fast fashion today. Our appetite for immediate wants is speeding up, and fast fashion has kept its reputation. Consequently, this has caused a magnitude of clothing waste to be produced and countless pollutants to be released.

Humans are growing exponentially, requiring greater amounts of space for living and industry, and consuming vast amounts of resources and energy. At this rate, without intervention or new technology, we cannot maintain a stable environment. We must meet our needs and wants in an equitable and fair manner. So let's go back to the bottom line: the “Triple Bottom Line,” also known as the “Three P’s”: People, Planet, and Prosperity. If both humans and businesses strive for these Three P’s, we can achieve sustainability. This isn’t about cutting out our wants or our jaw-dropping innovative fashion designs, but about consuming it in the correct way.

To help you imagine the issue at hand, let me take you through a systems thinking scenario, one that happened in an environmental community, the Wolves and the Yellowstone. For a time, these Wolves were removed from the Yellowstone community, causing the negative overpopulation of elk, creating a loss in aspen and willows. As soon as the Wolves were reintroduced to the environment, they provided a substantial surprising impact, healing the Yellowstone community and showing that our ecosystem is a complex system and small changes create a large impact.

Now, let’s relate this to fast fashion. We must start to think about all of the levels of the system from the design and manufacturing onto the consuming and re-consuming, and to the collection and processing of old wear that can be reclaimed and reused. This is just like the levels in an environmental community from producers up to the tertiary consumers. You mess up or take out one of these levels, and the effect turns out to be much greater. When we speed up the design and manufacturing of our garments, it, in return, causes a quick consumption rate but low life of the garment. Sure, we can live like this in the short term, but long term is unsustainable. The fashion industry is responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions and is the second-largest consumer of water worldwide; now this is beyond the fact of wasting your money on fleeting garments. This creates branches of environmental systems that are getting poisoned.

In all honesty, sometimes we don’t even realize that we are contributing to fast fashion consumption. Sure, you may not be shopping at the obvious face of fast fashion like Shein, but popular stores like H&M and Zara aren’t as pretty as the face they put on; and they have been making solid profits lately. Once you realize this, you’ll notice people boasting about how they got a cheap shirt or pants from one of these stores. And although it may be cute, the reality of it leaves you with an uneasy feeling.

So, what is Mother Earth calling to be the next trend? Sustainable brands and secondhand clothing. These solutions are not unrealistic like many other sustainable fads that circulate around social media. Want to go shopping? Head to a thrift store or sustainable storefronts. A website I love to check before shopping somewhere is Good on You; it rates hundreds of brands based on their ethical practices. A study by McKinsey & Company found that 66% of global consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable brands. Alternatively, shop online through stores like Depop, Etsy, Ebay, TheRealReal, Vestiaire, etc., to get your online shopping fix. I’m telling you, as soon as you start shopping this way, you will feel so much better about your consumption, and even elevate your style, steering away from trendy, fleeting fashion.

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Valuing Ecosystems in Fashion