The Voice of Fashion
Fashion and Climate Change: Filing The Green Suit
Recycling and resale alone cannot save the fashion industry. Here’s why COP26 brings in critical reminders
Today, November 9, several Indian news platforms published a rather poignant photograph. That of Tulsi Gowda, the 77-year old environmentalist from Honnali village in the Ankola taluka of Karnataka who was honoured with the Padma Shri for planting 30,000 saplings in her home state. Gowda, dressed in the traditional costume of the Halakki Vokkalu tribe, has been photographed from the back while greeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah.
While she literally has our back(s).
One of the reasons this photograph holds the gaze of readers inclined towards crafts-culture-costume-community is Gowda’s “costume”. The kind known to inspire fashion designers who periodically return to the compelling colour and drape grammar of “tribal” wear and other ethnographic references in dress and identity. Some of this argument wears irony because it is time perhaps for all of us, consumers and creators to draw inspiration from Gowda’s work as an environmentalist instead of her costume.
Photo: www.padmaawards.gov.in
Environmentalist Tulsi Gowda receiving the Padma Shri from President of India Ramnath Kovind.
Especially in the context of the United Nations (UN) climate summit COP26 (Conference of Parties) that will conclude on November 12 at Glasgow in the United Kingdom. And the UN’s Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Change, launched in Poland in 2018 as part of COP24, has been renewed at this summit. With even LVMH joining the 130 signatories, the conversation has been propelled beyond ideas around rewear, recycle, upcycle or the conversion of waste and plastic into mindful fashion. These matter of course, but the critical action needed is towards net zero emissions, regenerative farming and other hefty measures. All this alongside a debate on how limiting consumerism as a conflicting but crucial response can be initiated into all fashion dialogues.
Else, as British designer Stella McCartney, one of the founding signatories of the Fashion Charter, said at the summit, “the future of fashion looks bleak”. According to World Bank estimates, the fashion industry is responsible for 10 per cent of annual carbon emissions across the globe. This is more than all international flights and maritime shipping put together.
Photo: Owen Humphreys/POOL /AFP
Stella McCartney with Prince Charles during the COP26 Climate Conference.
Here’s a mixed list of news, views and updates that can help us choose what we want to do next in a personal-professional reorganisation of choices.
Become a Consumer Activist
What: Ask for certification, tracking codes, blockchain data or photographic stories before buying just because a brand claims it is “sustainable” and green. Or claims crafts-based artisanal products as synonymous for ecological work.
Case in Point: The debate between skepticism and belief is complex, but just consider a reality check. Whether you only watch as a browsing consumer from the front row of Instagram or read carefully between the lines, or are an addicted shopper, do you really believe all the companies and fashion brands who claim to be sustainable or eco-friendly, have the requisite certification, or follow supply chain verifications from colour dyes, people protection, and manufacturing laws that gives them the license to brand themselves as such? If the answer is no, become a consumer activist. Blacklist brands and labels that ride the trendy green bandwagon as marketing and PR tactics. Do not confuse crafts products with scientifically certified green merchandise. Shift the responsibility of finding out about the right products, materials, processes, everything to yourself and take ownership.
The Fashion Open Studio
What: Diminishing fashion’s environmental damage is not a narrow path, it must spread its wings, move from craft to community. From community to urban-rural dialogue and overall development.
Case in Point: In partnership with the British Council, Fashion Open Studio lists international programmes in tandem with the themes of COP26. In its current updates are profiles of nine designers from different continents who show how to reduce the fashion industry’s burden on the environment. Among them is Bhaavya Goenka of the India based IRO IRO, located near Jaipur. Besides recycling and continuance of dying crafts traditions, every finished and sold product from the label supports one family of weavers and enables them to pursue the profession they want.
Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images North America/Getty Images via AFP.
Gillian Anderson and Gabriela Hearst at the 2021 Met Gala.
Purpose and Profit
What: Some designers are leading by the difference they will bring to climate change. Let’s listen in.
Case in Point: Gabriela Hearst, artistic director of French luxury brand Chloe who was also at a panel at the ongoing COP26, recently announced the brand’s position as a B Corp brand. The most stringent kind of certification in the industry, it looks for a balance between purpose and profit. Hearst’s own eponymous label has plastic free stores and carbon free packaging; plus, in 2020 she partnered with EON, a digital identity platform that connects fashion and apparel throughout their lifecycle by unlocking visibility, traceability and insight through a QR code.
Also at COP26, designer Stella McCartney, a dedicated vegan and an advocate of environmentally friendly fashion who began to change the tide against animal based products many years before the fashion industry woke up to these concerns, urged global leaders to help with policy regulation and stepping up of laws. Speaking at The New York Times’ Climate Hub on November 8 as part of the summit, she said “There’s what feels like gazillions of fashion houses. We’ve got to have a method to measure across the board, there needs to be law on that. Our politicians need to step up.” McCartney felt that in the entire climate change dialogue, the fashion industry had gone under the radar.
That’s exactly what we need in India: stringent laws, big penalties on flouting the law by brands who cause environmental damage by exploitation and unregulated carbon emissions in factories.
Bandit, by Satish Vetoskar, was the winner of the third edition of R|ELAN presents Circular Design Challenge In Partnership with The United Nations Environment Program held in March 2021.
India’s Own Fashion-Climate Summit
What: Lakmé Fashion Week marks a sustainability day every season and awards young and emerging brands as part of its CDC (Circular Design Challenge) efforts. However, it is time for a climate change related, ecology focused event that delinks crafts practices and artisanal work to initiate a scientific approach towards climate conscious fashion. With small and big signatories from across the retail and fashion industry, that cover accessories, apparel and jewellery. It should be designed as a hub for designers and brands to get educated on different kinds and levels of certification and iron out supply chain flaws.
Case in Point: Recently, Deckers Brands (that owns Everlane and UGG, both into committed sustainability practices), with the globally recognised organisation Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) to set emission reduction targets. These are specific to climate science and can critically alter the carbon footprint of a fashion brand. An India-specific event could not only help local companies with information about such organisations for net-zero emissions in the future but find a way to measure, analyse and create research-able data on the gains of recycling, locally made circular fashion, and the innovative use of hazardous materials like plastic or leather. There is no data available that tells us how much recycling has been done so far in India, individually by different brands and smaller platforms and collectively as an industry.
Climate Change and the School Syllabus
What: Can culpability and its counter—responsible, call to action be taught? The answer being yes, the tough and knotty relationship between climate change and fashion consumption needs to be a part of the syllabus in schools and fashion institutes and design courses. Sustainability by design? Oh yes. As long as fashion colleges also teach the Crimes of Fashion.
Case in Point: Only education can inform and grow a will. Or as American senator John Kerry, a climate change warrior for many years now recently told Time magazine, “It is not just the climate—it is fighting for a reasonable response from the government, for a reasonable relationship with our fellow citizens, or non-citizens, a reasonable relationship with people around the world.” In other words, the fate of the civilisation depends on what we do about the climate and how we do it. Demanding a sustainable curriculum for school and university students, introducing eco-sustainability in schools as opposed to the commodified model of fashion education pursued in most countries is key. A 2021 Deloitte survey establishes that younger people are increasingly concerned with issues such as income inequality and climate change. The survey reported that 44 per cent of millennials and 49 per cent of Gen Zs base their choices on personal ethics when it comes to the type of work or the organisations they want to join. In the slog towards the ongoing COP26, new guidance was launched in the UK on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). It brought together experts from academic, business and student communities, to support students to acquire skills necessary to develop values and take actions towards a sustainable future. India needs to evolve its education policy with local academicians and culture-specific knowledge.
Banner: Protesters from the climate change group Extinction Rebellion (XR) outside the venue for the COP26 conference in Glasgow. Photo: Andy Buchanan/AFP
