What does 'sustainable fashion' mean?
Some thoughts and opinions on what ‘sustainable fashion’ means in the mainstream — to brands, and to the public — and what it really means.
Back in 2011, I started my MA Fashion and the Environment at London College of Fashion. Or, in a less wordy-more generalised title, ‘sustainable fashion’. At this time, the phrase was only a whisper amongst tight circles, and otherwise we were speaking of ‘ethical fashion’. Other bandied about terms included eco fashion and slow fashion.
Here I’ll introduce some thoughts on the semantics of ‘sustainable fashion’, and the impression it may give to the public and to the fashion industry itself, and why you should question it.
Does sustainable fashion mean that we only stop this? What else? Aerial view of used clothes discarded in the Atacama Desert, in Alto Hospicio, Iquique, Chile, on September 26th 2021 [Credit: Martin Bernetti/AFP via Getty Images].
Unsustainable fashion.
It goes without saying, I think, that in order to address what sustainable fashion is, we need to address was unsustainable fashion is.
The term ‘sustainable’, to me, is a descriptor of something with longevity, that sticks around, that has resilience. If we talk about physical fortitude, then we say something is sustainable if we can allow it to happen for a long time without detriment — usually to ourself. So on the face of it, sustainable fashion can be described as a movement that allows us to continue producing fashion without detriment.
But, that’s not sustainable. As we know (I hope you know), we have finite resources. There’ll come a time when we simply can’t produce anything else, because we don’t have the resources and materials. Sustainable fashion then needs to be about more than the immediate effect and short timeframe, as you’d have with say, running a marathon, and instead super forward future planning. If I run a marathon, what will the effect be further down the line? If I produce this garment, what knock-on does that have along the chain?
As it is, sustainable fashion is — and I’m going to be controversial here, perhaps — unsustainable.
It’s still using resources and materials, produced within a system that as yet does not fully value them, or have a way to re-use and repurpose and recycle them effectively and usefully. Sustainable fashion is still simply fashion and is therefore, unsustainable.
Of course, what we denote as fast fashion is more unsustainable. Or is it? To the retailers, this business model is highly sustainable; they get to churn out designs, rake in profit, retain customer loyalty. It’s a cycle that sustains itself, and the capitalist system is allowing it to do so.
This is where we get into the semantics. What does sustainable fashion relate to?
The onset of fast fashion business models.
Images: 1. Clothing retailer Zara opens their first physical store in Spain, 1975 with large queues [Source: timetoast.com]; 2. Clothing retailer H&M launch their first Concious Collection in 2011 using organic cotton, Tencel™️ and recycled polyster, where the rule was that, “To qualify as conscious, clothes must contain at least 50% sustainable materials like organic cotton or recycled polyester”.
Ethical fashion.
Back in 2011, starting on my research journey to dive deeper into what sustainability meant, I’d already done a Fashion Design bachelors degree. I have absolutely no recollection of us being taught what the fashion supply chain actually looked like. We were designers, and so we were top of the hierarchy.
A few experiences intertwined over the course of my studies, mostly self-initiated. I volunteered in the local Oxfam Vintage store, where I was able to see what people were throwing away and additionally what people were willing to pay for preloved; I was Chairperson of the People and Planet Society where I led a fashion activism campaign against Topshop; I worked as a menswear design assistant for Aubin & Wills then later as a supervisor in their Selfridges concession; I worked as an intern for small fashion brand Outsider; I volunteered in an Environmental Justice Foundation store; I spent two weeks at Kolding Design School on an interdisciplinary design camp; I was a production assistant in a luxury Belgian atelier, Honest by.
The real world wisdom forced me to recognise that things aren’t binary, and that, for sure, designers are just a tiny cog.
Back then, ‘ethical’ related to people, and ‘sustainable’ related to the environment.
I’d say that’s still how it is today, though the waters are (literally) murky.
Fashion’s social justice issues.
Images: 1. Rana Plaza factory collapse 2013 [Source: via CNN, Zakir Hossain Chowdhury/NurPhoto/Getty Images]; 2. 130 VK Garment workers are taking Tesco and social auditors Intertek to court for alleged negligence [Source: Labour Behind The Label].
What Google AI says.
*Google AI search was conducted on February 11th, 2025.
Sustainable fashion is the practice of making and using clothing in a way that's better for the environment and the people who make it.
Ethical fashion is clothing that is produced and bought in a way that is responsible to people and the environment. It can also be called sustainable fashion or slow fashion.
According to Generative AI, there isn’t actually a difference between these terms. No nuances, no context. There’s an interesting sublety in the description, of sustainable relating to using while ethical relates to buying.
The AI gives some examples of sustainable fashion as Fair Trade clothing, on-demand manufacturing, “high quality and timeless designs”, and “environmentally friendly manufacturing”. It provides the oft-quoted statistic of: Extending the average life of clothes by just nine months can save billions of resources. Yet it relays ethical fashion as important because it “has a significant impact on the environment and human rights”, and that it addresses these issues by using “eco-friendly practices, fair labor conditions, and responsible resource management”.
This is intriguing to me because it doesn’t distinguish if one term is for a certain group of practices, and obviously as it’s generative, just churns up the confusion so neither term are descriptive enough to get a true grasp.
So, if I asked you? How would you describe the nuances of ethical fashion, sustainable fashion, slow fashion, fast fashion… or even, between fashion vs clothing?Does it matter to you?
As a person of the public, who will purchase stuff, and you’re looking to make changes to your shopping and want something better, do you want your retailer to use the correct term? Perhaps it’s trivial whether they use ethical or sustainable, just that they use it? However, if they can’t even properly describe to you what they’re doing, how can you trust?
If you’re a person working in the textile and fashion sector (and any other that intersects with this system), is it integral to your role to understand the context and use them correctly? Or, again, does it seem that using either term — as Google AI posits — good enough to explain this fashion as better than the fast conventional alternative?
Green claims and marketing. Fashion content creator Andrea Cheong unpicks the labelling of a H&M “Conscious Collection” garment, 2022 [Source: The Cool Down].
Back to Google AI, it suggests tells that sustainable fashion can be achieved through:
Materials: Using eco-friendly materials like organic cotton, bamboo, or recycled fabrics (lots to unpack there)
Production: Reducing water usage, energy consumption, and waste (great, makes sense)
Labor: Ensuring workers are paid a fair wage and have safe working conditions (living wage?)
Shopping: Buying second-hand, renting, borrowing, or swapping clothing (how about the retailers not overproducing and heavily marketing?)
Repairing: Extending the life of clothes by repairing, redesigning, and upcycling (interestingly nothing about recycling, yet it proposes using recycled fabrics)
It also gives some other “goals” as: Reducing carbon footprint; Addressing overproduction; Reducing pollution and waste; Supporting biodiversity; Upholding animal welfare; Benefitting the community. Though these appear to not be vital to achieving sustainability in fashion. For me, overproduction and intense marketing needs to be front-and-centre when discussing shopping.
Alright. Then ethical fashion can be produced (though it’s not an achievment to be met) through:
Fair labor practices: Workers are paid a fair wage and work in safe conditions (please, living wage)
Sustainable materials: Clothing is made from environmentally friendly materials, such as organic cotton (“environmentally-friendly” but not people or wildlife friendly)
Supply chain transparency: The source of materials and components used in manufacturing is clear (and accountability and traceability)
Environmental responsibility: Production methods have a minimal impact on the environment (and people? animals?)
And if you wanted to purchase ethical fashion, all you’d need do is: Read the label to see what materials were used; Research the working conditions of employees; Check if the packaging is sustainable; Look for brands that use fair trade practices.
What’s ‘ethical’ and what’s ‘sustainable’?
Images: 1. Workers at a cotton factory in Awat county, in China’s Xinjiang region [Source: Xinhua/Alamy via The Guardian]; 2. Vestiaire Collective preloved item drop-off for resale [Source: Vestiaire Collective via The Standard].
Seems clear cut, right?
I’m highlighting all this because it shows how many meanings and consequential solutions are available.
Me writing the title ‘what does sustainable fashion mean?’ wasn’t actually to give you an answer. You need to figure that out for yourself. Your sustainability is different to my sustainability, because, surprise surprise, we are not the same person with the same experiences, background, needs etc etc.
But by including Google AI I have tried to show that the information we’re receiving as public and as whoever in the fashion industry is very dependent on the biases of who’s writing the stuff in the first place. And let’s face it, most blogs on sustainability are just repeats of another, hence why Google knows to use the statistic from WRAP’s report Design for Extending Clothing Life [2016].
The public need to cut through the marketing and recognise that green claims are mostly that — claims. That’s why there are Green Claims Directives to be enforced that penalise brands and retailers from using claims willy nilly without solid validated background information.
Brands and retailers need to stop slapping claims on products when they clearly don’t understand them themselves, or are doing so just for manipulation and capitalisation sake.
There won’t be concensus over whether organic cotton is sustainable or ethical, because it’s not a binary conversation. Even when you conduct Life Cycle Assessments or do carbon footprint calculations or provide data on living wages across the supply chain, you cannot commit that organic cotton is sustainable.
H&M are an example of this; they are a leading buyer of organically-certified (that’s certified, not grown) cotton yet they continue to overproduce otherwise poor quality clothing with no system in place to recover it for reuse. In this context, is using organic cotton more sustainable and should anything produced in organic cotton be classed as sustainable fashion? If compared to conventionally-grown cotton, perhaps yes. That’s not what Google AI is touting though, and usually it’s not what the public are led to believe through retailers’ claims.
Disclosure and trying.
Images: 1. Page from The Fashion Transparency Index 2023 showing highest and lowest scoring brands — The Fashion Transparency Index reviews brands’ public disclosure on human rights and environmental issues across 258 indicators in 5 key areas [Source: Fashion Revolution]; 2. Graph from Vogue’s Size Inclusivity Report showing plus-size representation of models on the AW24 catwalks [Source: Vogue].
What does sustainable fashion mean, then?
To me, this is a moot term. I don’t like to use it, though often I have to. I teach a Sustainable Fashion Design online course for UAL and I essentially doom the students by asking them to question what sustainable fashion is, and propose that realistically sustainable fashion doesn’t exist and can’t exist.
If you’re going to use the term, be authentic with it. Don’t say “I’m a sustainable brand” and then just talk about your packaging solutions. Say what you’re doing and why you think it’s better than another way, and what you’d like to do and why you haven’t done it yet. There has to be honesty for this industry — and every other intersecting it — to move forward. I’m fed up of bubbles and silos and propaganda. We can’t learn if we’re talking to the same people and regurgitating all the stuff that still doesn’t make sense 15 years on.
Authentic advertising?
Images: 1. Ganni released content explaining why they say they’re not sustainable, 2021 [Source: @ganni]; 2. Ace & Tate’s campaign that highlighted “misguided decisions” made when applying for B Corp certification, 2021 [Source: Ace & Tate via Vogue Business].
If I had to give it a definition… you know, actually I wouldn’t. And I don’t, ever.
That my MA was renamed to Fashion Futures is reasonable; it set up the conversation to only include fashion and its relation to the environment, while now it can be progressive, forward-thinking, systemic. Of course, people are of the environment so realistically this does encompass social justice issues, but it was “fashion and the environment” not “with”. Fashion is not a separate entity — we are making fashion from the environment with the environment’s help.
I’m not going to define fashion sustainability, but I would urge you to ensure you’re not considering it as a thing unto itself.
The points from Google AI are indeed helpful starting points; where do resources and energy and services and labour fit, and where does they cross into other areas? What does sustainable fashion mean now, and what could it mean for our futures if we shifted this or that.
Thank you for reading.
Read similar THOUGHT posts on fashion, such as:
Imagining possibilities [Centre for Sustainable Fashion].