As sustainable fashion becomes a wide-spread movement both off and online, many sustainable fashion advocates have used their platforms to denounce the fast fashion industry. While it is true fast fashion’s tendency for cheap textile and mass-production can have serious environmental consequences, sustainable fashion advocates must rid their activism of elitism if they wish to appeal to the masses.
Sustainable clothing labels take pride in the fact that they have smaller carbon footprints and take measures to pay their workers better than fast fashion brands do. For this, they should be commended, and advocates’ criticism of fast fashion is often warranted.
However, this criticism too often finds itself bordering on classist ignorance. While some view fast fashion as unethical and cheap practice that all can and should avoid, for others, it is the only clothing option that is both accessible and stylish. For many consumers, prices are a barrier, and when promoting sustainability, advocates should not bring down those who rely on fast fashion—particularly when sustainable clothing brands have no intention of bringing their prices down for the average shopper.
Often, the same people who look down on those who can only afford fast fashion often splurge at second-hand stores and up-cycle the best garments to resell at a higher price online, contributing to a toxic thrift-flipping trend that leaves poorer consumers with few retailers to turn to for adequate clothes.
These second-hand stores are one of the few places where many lower-income individuals can find affordable, stylish and eco-friendly outfits. When upcyclers take away the option to purchase such items from those who need them in order to make a quick buck, they cannot in turn shame those who engage in fast fashion for the basic right to clothing of a decent quality and taste.
Sustainable fashion advocates—most of whom fall within the middle to upper class—have no right to judge those who do not abide by their eco-friendly fashion ideals, when they are able to abide by those ideals themselves by riding off their position of economic privilege. Shaming others for buying into fast fashion because they have few other choices is not activism—it is elitism, and drives many away from the movement as a result.
To promote sustainability, advocates should shop at sustainable brands for the bulk of their items (if they can afford to), refrain from purchasing only trendy and quality items at second-hand stores, resell their clothes at reasonable prices, and voice their concerns to brands instead of people.
By doing so, they can strengthen a movement that currently suffers from a reputation of arrogance, though is inarguably necessary in the fight against climate change.
Featured graphic from file.
