Sustainability: Fashion’s New Favourite

Dec 12th 2019

Move over Kendall Jenner, and you Miss Hadid, the fashion industry has a new favourite and she’s called sustainability! According to a recent study by McKinsey Apparel, online searches for sustainable fashion have tripled in the last three years. This means that more and more people are looking to ethical sources for their fashion fix, whether that be through sustainable brands, charity shops or our very own, Brag Vintage. With the fashion industry being the third-highest polluting in the world, this couldn’t come at a better time and could potentially change the industry for good.

First, the facts. Fast fashion and unethical garment production are huge threats to our environment and in the current climate crisis, things have got to change. Did you know that every week one million items of clothing end up in a landfill? And that’s not all...once in landfill, the non-biodegradable fabric can sit there for up to 200 years! It’s all horrifying stuff, but not what you immediately think about when you’re jumping online to find a dress for your sister’s boyfriend’s nan’s 60th, which let’s be honest, you won’t be wearing again.

Now more than ever we have too much choice. Let me cast your minds back to the early 2000’s - a haunting activity for some, it certainly is for me. The vivid imagery of a red pipe-jean and white vest combination - cheers mum. But aside from terrible outfits and even more questionable haircuts, the noughties marked a different time for the fashion industry. It was then, not so long ago, that many brands only felt the need to release two collections each year, Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter. Madness, I know - how on earth did we cope?? Especially when you think about the 52 collections that are now thrown our way each year. Trends can change in minutes and fashion lines have to keep up, but behind the seemingly slick fast fashion machine is an often unethical, tired and environmentally-damaging production line. But why does having too much choice have to be a bad thing? With many brands changing their attitudes towards sustainability, it doesn’t.

At the Copenhagen Fashion Summit in 2017, big names in fashion were presented with the 2020 Circular Fashion System Commitment, which asked brands to pledge that they’d make active movements towards sustainability and, most importantly, have proof of this by 2020. There are many ways they can do this, for instance, the brand could stop using synthetic and mixed-fibre fabrics as these are impossible to recycle, and replace them with mono-fibres (much easier to recycle). By May 2018, 12.5 percent of the global fashion market had joined the pledge, including big names like Nike, ASOS and Gap.

But what are we to do while we wait for the fashion industry to answer our pro-sustainability prayers? Why wait when you could dip your toe into a world where the clothes already exist? Charity, thrift and vintage - the holy trinity. The wonderful thing about trends is that they always come back around, so at stores like Brag you are bound to find something fashion-forward without causing any extra harm to the planet.

According to the lovely people at Levi’s, making one pair of jeans produces the same amount of greenhouse gases as driving a car for more than 69 miles! What better excuse do you need to invest in a pair that will last you a lifetime? Our vintage Levi’s have all stood the test of time, so you don’t have to buy new.

The future looks bright for sustainability and fashion! If things go to plan we should be seeing change very soon, but in the meantime, let’s see if we can get the amount of searches for sustainable fashion quadrupled by 2020.