I teach sustainable fashion as part of a sustainable business course and you've hit the nail on the head here with the paradox of selling more and the green imperative of selling less. I find degrowth a useful model here: reduce planet-harming sectors as much as possible (fast fashion), decommodify as well (more self-made clothes, swaps), reuse what's there (secondhand), and make sure that the new stuff produced doesn't harm the planet or exploit humans or animals and lasts as long as possible (slow fashion). This post made me a subscriber!
"And that’s the contradiction every 'sustainable' fashion brand eventually runs into: To actually be good for the planet, it must discourage overconsumption. But to survive, it usually has to encourage it."
Noting this contradiction full well, is there a model by which a "sustainable" fashion brand *could* exist without compromising on that dimension? It feels like either you stay small, violate that premise, or go big and eventually fold. It sounds silly to ask, but is there a sustainably sustainable solution?
I don’t think it’s silly at all! I think that’s the core question. I think a truly planet-friendly fashion brand could exist, but only if it is not primarily a new clothes company. It would have to make money from durability, repair, resale, rental, remaking, made-to-order production, and keeping garments in circulation longer. That’s basically the circular business model theory: decoupling revenue from producing more stuff. https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/the-fashion-remodel/learn
“ To actually be good for the planet, it must discourage overconsumption. But to survive, it usually has to encourage it.” - You could be describing our entire economic system here.
Makes me think of this story I heard on npr this morning. The US has like 2 billion square ft of storage units. If landfills are the ass hole of consumerism, these things must be the colon or something.
In terms of clothing, I see some ridiculously large closets in the course of my work and it’s really depressing. It’s clear there is something wrong big picture that not enough of us are grappling with yet.
The colon, I like it! I think starting w/Trump 1.0, significant tax breaks were provided for storage unit development. Part of "Opportunity zone" stuff, OZs being "low income" and so why so many are in rural areas. Still there, unlike the ones for wind and solar power.
George Carlin's "Stuff" monologue is still relevant 40 years later and I recall there was a riff on storage units.
It seems that there is no good answer as long as profits outweigh need. Until we change the consumption mindset into more climate sustainable models, nothing will change. The greedy capitalists will keep pushing to make more money for the already morbidly wealthy, and the rest of us will be buried in overflowing toxic landfills.
It's a good thing for me that I rarely buy new clothes and when I do make a change, it's because I don't need something anymore and I donate them so others can make use of perfectly good clothes. Every few years I may have to replace a worn out article but I typically wear things for years before that happens. I definitely could care less about fashions. If it's not practical, I don't need it.
Often when I see some "green" marketing, I think of your remark on some Earth Day about avoiding "tacky green consumerism." It is hard to sort out what's just tacky from actual progress. Always good to see "progress" even if it isn't "perfection." I wouldn't have heard of this acquisition except for you; reminds of however long ago Amazon bought Whole Foods. However flawed the WF scene then, it doesn't seem to have rubbed off on Jeff Bezos, or if it did, that seems over.
One quibble. In the UN report cited about YUGE fraction of GHG heating from "resource extraction & processing," a bit of dig reveals that "extraction" includes agriculture. I didn't go much further but ag methane is an outsize fraction of ag GHGs and cow burps and rice paddy decay and fertilizer N2O isn't what most folks associate w/"extraction."
Getting a tad off topic, but I get crap for advocating solar farms as farms on farmland. "Oh look at all that 'extracted' steel and glass and aluminum blocking the land's photosynthesis and respiration." First those half inch thick panels on scrawny posts offset three inches of very extracted coal each year, so almost eight feet deep "seam" when the thin panels are replaced at 30 years. Then, really enough grass and forbs or weeds or whatever grows that soil carbon stays the same, while the coal that wasn't burned would have emitted 400 tons and the whole soil carbon reservoir is 100 tons per acre. (CO2e, not just C, to be wonky.)
We can huff and puff like the Lorax and dream up all forms of utopian capitalism that contradict itself for the sake of degrowth and sustainability but UNLESS we realize that’s a complete and utter fantasy and seize the Once-lers’ Thneed factories and Super-Axe-Hackers, they are going to burn everything down like some real life evil sorcerer:
In the words of Marx: “Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.”
I teach sustainable fashion as part of a sustainable business course and you've hit the nail on the head here with the paradox of selling more and the green imperative of selling less. I find degrowth a useful model here: reduce planet-harming sectors as much as possible (fast fashion), decommodify as well (more self-made clothes, swaps), reuse what's there (secondhand), and make sure that the new stuff produced doesn't harm the planet or exploit humans or animals and lasts as long as possible (slow fashion). This post made me a subscriber!
"And that’s the contradiction every 'sustainable' fashion brand eventually runs into: To actually be good for the planet, it must discourage overconsumption. But to survive, it usually has to encourage it."
Noting this contradiction full well, is there a model by which a "sustainable" fashion brand *could* exist without compromising on that dimension? It feels like either you stay small, violate that premise, or go big and eventually fold. It sounds silly to ask, but is there a sustainably sustainable solution?
I don’t think it’s silly at all! I think that’s the core question. I think a truly planet-friendly fashion brand could exist, but only if it is not primarily a new clothes company. It would have to make money from durability, repair, resale, rental, remaking, made-to-order production, and keeping garments in circulation longer. That’s basically the circular business model theory: decoupling revenue from producing more stuff. https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/the-fashion-remodel/learn
I was wondering the same thing while reading this. Maybe Patagonia’s model comes closest?
“ To actually be good for the planet, it must discourage overconsumption. But to survive, it usually has to encourage it.” - You could be describing our entire economic system here.
Makes me think of this story I heard on npr this morning. The US has like 2 billion square ft of storage units. If landfills are the ass hole of consumerism, these things must be the colon or something.
https://www.npr.org/2026/05/18/nx-s1-5805080-e1/the-business-of-storage-units-is-booming-we-met-vermonts-operators
In terms of clothing, I see some ridiculously large closets in the course of my work and it’s really depressing. It’s clear there is something wrong big picture that not enough of us are grappling with yet.
The colon, I like it! I think starting w/Trump 1.0, significant tax breaks were provided for storage unit development. Part of "Opportunity zone" stuff, OZs being "low income" and so why so many are in rural areas. Still there, unlike the ones for wind and solar power.
George Carlin's "Stuff" monologue is still relevant 40 years later and I recall there was a riff on storage units.
It seems that there is no good answer as long as profits outweigh need. Until we change the consumption mindset into more climate sustainable models, nothing will change. The greedy capitalists will keep pushing to make more money for the already morbidly wealthy, and the rest of us will be buried in overflowing toxic landfills.
It's a good thing for me that I rarely buy new clothes and when I do make a change, it's because I don't need something anymore and I donate them so others can make use of perfectly good clothes. Every few years I may have to replace a worn out article but I typically wear things for years before that happens. I definitely could care less about fashions. If it's not practical, I don't need it.
Often when I see some "green" marketing, I think of your remark on some Earth Day about avoiding "tacky green consumerism." It is hard to sort out what's just tacky from actual progress. Always good to see "progress" even if it isn't "perfection." I wouldn't have heard of this acquisition except for you; reminds of however long ago Amazon bought Whole Foods. However flawed the WF scene then, it doesn't seem to have rubbed off on Jeff Bezos, or if it did, that seems over.
One quibble. In the UN report cited about YUGE fraction of GHG heating from "resource extraction & processing," a bit of dig reveals that "extraction" includes agriculture. I didn't go much further but ag methane is an outsize fraction of ag GHGs and cow burps and rice paddy decay and fertilizer N2O isn't what most folks associate w/"extraction."
Getting a tad off topic, but I get crap for advocating solar farms as farms on farmland. "Oh look at all that 'extracted' steel and glass and aluminum blocking the land's photosynthesis and respiration." First those half inch thick panels on scrawny posts offset three inches of very extracted coal each year, so almost eight feet deep "seam" when the thin panels are replaced at 30 years. Then, really enough grass and forbs or weeds or whatever grows that soil carbon stays the same, while the coal that wasn't burned would have emitted 400 tons and the whole soil carbon reservoir is 100 tons per acre. (CO2e, not just C, to be wonky.)
We can huff and puff like the Lorax and dream up all forms of utopian capitalism that contradict itself for the sake of degrowth and sustainability but UNLESS we realize that’s a complete and utter fantasy and seize the Once-lers’ Thneed factories and Super-Axe-Hackers, they are going to burn everything down like some real life evil sorcerer:
In the words of Marx: “Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.”
I wonder how well a conventional sewing machine would handle bamboo fabric.