What is circular fashion?

 

Photo: Bag Affair ⓒ

In this post, I reviewed available literature on circular fashion experiences from different parts of the world.  

Brooks et al. in their paper Fashion, Sustainability, and the Anthropocene discuss how Anthropocene influences current circular fashion tendencies. As cited by Brooks et al.,- “In response to fears about the environmental impacts of clothing production and consumption, a new approach—closed-loop recycling—has gained prominence among forward-looking industry leaders”. Namely, as the authors found out, it addresses the practice of recycling the apparel goods inside the stores such as H&M, which is the second-largest retailer in the world. As Cecilia 

Brannsten project manager of the UK Sustainability Team explains,- “Basically, we want to  change the mindset of the customer [so they] see their old clothes as a resource rather than throwing  them into the garbage or letting them pile up at the back of their closet.” When customers give their no longer wanted clothes for recycle, they get a 15% discount voucher to use in H&M stores for each bag of clothing they brought to the store in all 53 markets. After the handed clothes sold by the H&M to the secondary market for the company that performs an international take-back system.  Now, these used clothing are exported to low-income countries as it is the most profitable way to dispose of.  

Authors connect these practices to the wider historical setting of the Anthropocene. They state that the development of international garment economies is actually interwoven with the history of human-environmental interactions. According to Brooks et al, -“A strength and weakness of the  Anthropocene concept is the way in which it can provoke audiences to think about what a future world will look like while also painting a picture of inevitable change and recognizing the “godlike agency” of humans. And yet, one of the most problematic issues with the Anthropocene is that it homogenizes humanity. Modern life is depoliticized, reducing the accountability of, for example,  those in North America and Europe who have done the most to shape global environmental change through enjoying the benefits of hyperconsumption since 1945.” But there are some researchers who see Anthropocene in a positive way, for example, Erle Ellis claims that “we must not see the  Anthropocene as a crisis, but as the beginning of a new geological epoch ripe with human-directed opportunity”.  

Hopte & Poldner (2014) in their paper David and Goliath in sustainable fashion: strategic business alliances in the UK fashion industry strategic alliances analyze different models of strategic alliances present in the UK sustainable fashion industry nowadays.

According to the authors, there are four types of alliances that are presented in the chart below:

These alliance networks have common goals and projects and help each other to achieve them,  although as described in the chart the scope of their work is different. Thus, these companies like  Topshop, RED, and others achieve goals together with other forces that make it easier for them.  Although it has its own limitations such as joining the company with the same age group.  

Poldner & Veenswijk (2011) in their research ModaFusion on the global catwalk: a narrative approach to studying the ethical fashion industry studied the international organization  ModaFusion, based in Rio de Janeiro and others. They explored how ecopreneurship is practiced among them and how they are realized taking into account the cultural patterns and practices. As Figure 1 from their article shows for Moda Fusion organizations in order to achieve all the standards of Ethical Fashion it is important not only to use eco fabrics but also work with poor communities, provide fair wages, care for tradition and cultural aspects such as race, domestic violence, sex and etc. In addition, for design, it is important for them to care for traditions and cultural aspects.  

Ivanova and et.al (2013) in their paper Touch and Feel Signals That Make a Difference discussed the dynamics of development of one of the world’s first and best eco-fashion brands- Osklen, that was founded by Oskar Metsavaht in Brazil in 1989. They discuss the “brand de-composition and  re-composition of signals for six collections—from the simplest to the most complex.”  

Through analyzing 6 collections of Oskar Metsavaht they claim that even though there are various complex differences between traditional and environmentally and socially conscious consumption,  but “we” overcome those differences by translating the common pattern of the functionality of signals.

Moreover, authors believe that “well-intended efforts to construct multi-sensorial signals can be  socially beneficial and economically profitable; we can only hope such efforts will multiply.” 

Hvass (2015) in his paper Business Model Innovation through Second Hand Retailing, examines how reselling products of the fashion brand by itself can enable sustainable business model adaptation. The case study based on leading Swedish fashion brand Filippa K started by Filippa  Knutsson and Patrik Kihlborg in 1993. The brand owners started reselling their unsold garments in an attempt to prolong their life and in an effort to a sustainable model. According to Hvass (2015)  Co-founder of the brand,- “Filippa Knutsson has described her company with the following words:  ‘Inspired by my own needs and of those around me, I set out to build a brand that has substance and truth, not dependence on the superficial trends of the fashion industry’.

Since the inception of its circular model, the company keeps being a leader in sustainable fashion  brand by providing: 

∙ Long-lasting products through design and quality 

∙ Styles and materials that live for more than one season 

∙ Prolonged life-cycle of products through fitting services and repair 

∙ All products longer selling opportunity in the store 

∙ Second life through reuse and recycling

Overall, the author found out that premium quality products fashion brands have the potential to integrate resell models into their business models and value propositions. Moreover, resell  activities give additional value to the brand and makes customer relationship with the brand closer,  facilitate gaining more customer groups and generate income with used garments or collection samples. All these can be achieved though, given the product’s high quality, strong brand awareness, and market maturity. 

Gurova and Morozova in their article A critical approach to sustainable fashion: Practices of clothing designers in the Kallio neighborhood of Helsinki studied the practice of “sustainable fashion” in the Kallio neighborhood of Helsinki by clothing designers and seamstresses. Also, they studied what kind of challenges they experience and interpreted them. As authors found out  sustainable fashion effort in the Kallio neighborhood of Helsinki have several impacts on society,  rather than being profitable:  

∙ Influence consumer patterns and habits and create opportunities for consumers to be more eco-friendly. 

∙ Social impact- small-scale entrepreneurship creates jobs in times of austerity 

∙ Creates opportunities for new products on the market. 

On the community level impact these designers influence: 

∙ By committing commit to the production of symbolic culture and reinforce the attractiveness of a neighborhood involving various social groups.

∙ By creating space for the exchange of ideas and knowledge. 

∙ By contributing to the development of their neighborhood as a vital, vibrant, and lively place. 

∙ By creating a unique cityscape, which offers an alternative to the ubiquitous transnational corporations.  

∙ By adding new products and being entrepreneurs of taste, the designers diversify the faces of fashion in the city. 

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Overconsumption of goods. Why do we do it?

                                                   Photo from my personal archive Ⓒ Jarkyn Omurbekova 

Until recently, consumption was seen by social researchers as a hedonistic activity or the pursuit of pleasure for pleasure (Campnell 1995, Slater 2008). Consumer hedonism is associated with the first decade of the 2000s, called the "fat zero", when new infrastructure (shopping centers, credit cards, etc.) and increased incomes created conditions and opportunities for hedonistic consumption. In Scandinavia, the discourse of sustainable consumption is dominant, and related practices, such as separate garbage collection and recycling, are also dominant. The reuse of glass containers has become an integral part of people's daily life. The development of critical discourse in relation to consumption can be linked to the emergence of a new subject - a citizen consumer. It is contrasted with the consumer-buyer (customer consumer) (Cohen 2001). If the consumer buyer acts in accordance with the principle of pleasure and in order to maximize their own savings.

The consumer-citizen behaves in accordance with political responsibility and the thought of the common good. The consumer citizens behavior assumes that everyday purchases are filled with other meanings for him than pleasure and satisfaction of his own needs. The citizen consumer approaches the consequences of his choice responsibly, assesses their meaning and moral side. The emergence of the civil consumer is associated with the development of "political consumerism", a special type of daily activism in which the critical potential of consumption is used to influence the processes in society (Slater 2008). The activity of the civil consumer reflects different practices. These include "green", "eco", "responsible", "conscious" consumption (Littler 2009). In a general sense, these types can be called "ethical" consumption, which implies the purposeful, conscious acquisition of goods and services produced in accordance with ethical principles, while naming them with minimal harm to humans and the environment. Ethical consumption implies consumption of organic products; fair trade products; products for the manufacture of which no animal tests are applied (products-not-tested on animals); clothing that does not use child labor or create a working environment similar to that of slaves (non-sweatshop brands). Ethical consumption also means avoiding "unnecessary" purchases. A special place among consumer activism is occupied by the purchase of goods from local producers. Forms of ethical consumption: "boycott" - refusal to buy goods, and "buycott" – positive discrimination, acquisition of goods of companies that share ethical principles are considered as forms of political consumerism, which implies that the consumer has the opportunity to express his opinion and influence the public situation (Neilson 2010, Stromsnes 2009). Another direction in sustainable fashion is collaborative consumption. It refers to the sharing of things among people or communities, which is done either through personal interaction or with the participation of technology. Examples of collaborative use are the following: consumption acts as shared use of things, Barter, borrowing, exchange, rent, donation, swapping (Botsman & Rogers 2010).

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Fashion design, fashion style, and their influence on society

 

                                        Photo from my personal archive Ⓒ Jarkyn Omurbekova 

Review of available Literature on fashion design, fashion, and their influence 

A number of new, theoretical approaches and studies of fashion, fashion design, and the study of dress have appeared, casting new light on the issue of stylistic change as shaped by social, political, and cultural processes, and demonstrating links between the embodied self and social history. (Maynard 2000) 

For example, Maynard states that (2000) “Australian designers like Kee and Jackson were attempting, partly through referencing indigenous (aboriginal) motifs and cultural 'borrowings', to offer supposedly timeless and 'genuine' clothing alternatives outside the framework and cycles of novelty endemic to orthodox Western fashion. These options were for the relatively wealthy consumer but soon flowed into everyday consumption and the tourist market. «In the early 1970s, the political climate of the Whitlam government, elected in 1972, fostered new encouragement to artists as a way of strengthening national identity. (Maynard 2000) At that moment two Australian designers Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson inaugurated the innovative Flamingo Park boutique in Sydney. These two designers, and others, too, became invigorated through contact with what they considered to be timeless, spiritually uplifting 'grassroots' design, namely Australian indigenous art, artifacts, and textiles. (Maynard 2000) 

In the work “'Fashion in Undress': Clothing and Commodity Culture in Household”, Catherine Waters (year) discusses dressing and social identity, dressing and social influence, clothing and behavior and found out that there are much interconnected and influence each other. The author found 

out that clothing has an important role in people’s lives and also how people judge and judged (or perceived) only because of getting dressed. Waters found out that fetishism of the commodity arises when fashion identity becomes extremely important for a person and in the society too. Waters also discusses the function of uniforms, as they make the man and marks them as an inherently ambiguous signifier and when it is always a fashion, the identity of a person always will be the constant in society. Another article that supports this idea is “Sociology of Fashion: Order and Change” by Aspers Patrick and Godart Frederik (year), where authors examined fashion as a social phenomenon, that important for society in terms of culture and economy. Later Jukka Gronow (1993) discusses a similar idea and marked people’s losing their identity and personality or preserving it due to the social impact of fashion. Elaborating on ideas of Emanuel Kant and George Simmel, Gronow explained fashion, clothing role in society as a way to express and distinguish himself in society and at the same time get aesthetic pleasure. Moreover, Gronow pointed out that for people fashion is a tool to solve the problem of the philosophy of life as was expressed once by Emanuel Kant. 

When the fashion product being made there a lot of things that need to be considered and to be taken into account. They can be sociological, economic, and psychological analyses of the society, due to their important role and impact. By making particular product marketing specialists or designers should know what is in demand now and what people will mostly like and how it should be presented. Fatma Engin Alpat and Yusuf Ziya Aksu (2014) found out that people’s taste, requirements, likes to play a big role in the formation of a new product and it is extremely important to examine what people prefer in terms of textile products. Authors suggest that only “with the integration of esthetic ideas existing in human nature” it is possible to create fashion products. (Aplat and Aksu, 2014).

Demshina (2009) points out that ethnic destination in the last decades is one of the most demanded in the design. And in analyzing ethno tendencies in modern design it is important to take into consideration the connection of actualization of ethnical theme with common cultural processes, history of the formation of the trends in fashion, the main features of ethnic style, creative understanding among different ethnic theme designers. When exploring ethnic trends in design, it is necessary to make a difference in the definition: ethnic trends, national style, and folklore. From a theoretical point of view between the suit in national style and ethnic style, there is a certain difference. Demshina (2009) characterize national style as the generalization and interpretation of traditions, and ethnic style is differentiable by national color, character, ecology, and details of the ethnographic style of a country. Moreover, it approves the idea of harmony between man and nature. (Demshina 2009) 

For fashion designers, it is also very important to be in right place in order to succeed. The productive role of 'quality of place': a case study of fashion designers in Toronto Leslie and Brail (2011) researched this idea and come up to decide that for fashion designer it is extremely important to have a “luck” to be in right place in a right time. But the main thing is that new designers a less likely to influence and to be recognized than old ones, thus it is the whole social process to gain popularity and build up a market for fashion designers. Following this idea, Finnane (1993) discusses how Chinese fashion designers are building upmarket and growing in China, but at the same time their struggle to get recognition on the world stage. As China market associates with products of poor quality, it also creates a negative attitude from people. Although China is a big republic, according to this study a lot of people preferred foreign brands. The same tendency can be noticed in Kyrgyzstan. 

In Grassroots Style: Re-Evaluating Australian Fashion and Aboriginal Art in the 1970s and 1980s Margaret Maynard (2000) wrote about Australian designers in the 1970s and 1980s who looked for inspiration and relied on European history, in the hope to find alternatives to the current Western fashionable style (Maynard 2000). Maynard states that by the end of the 1960s, the Australian government and community agencies were also seriously encouraging indigenous craftspeople to design textiles and make clothing using traditional motifs as a route toward self-sufficiency and cultural reclamation (p-24). Since the early 1980s, there has been an explosion of urban, highly politicized Aboriginal art, alongside what is regarded as more spiritual, so-called 'authentic', nonurban art. So in the Australian fashion designers example, it is analyzed that, ethnicity, national imagery, and indigenous imagery, can never be 'essential' but must be regarded as moving through cultures and through art forms and be seen as expendable and subjective notions, looking back to shared cultural or historical markers but always in process and never static. (Maynard 2000). 

In their study “Social Utility and Fashion Behavior,” McIntyre, Miller, and Jones (1992) present results of the examination on the development of fashion ad its influence on society. This data was gathered using computer-based simulation. The research shed the light on how to influence society's fashion and how it varies in different cases and situations. Also, fashion behavior varies from person to person depending on his/her personal treats. Hence, this research presents valuable data that could help to understand both fashion behavior and also dynamics and varieties of social influence. 

“Women have historically been marginalized in concepts of human rights definitions and applications. This 'gender' blind spot in human rights law and movements was, and remains to a fair degree, blatant” (Han-Woo, 1999). 

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George Simmel’s Theory on Fashion

                                                            Photo credits: Dior Ⓒ 

 I have analyzed the Fashion theory of George Simmel, which could possibly explain our patterns of behavior when we consume goods. Georg Simmel explains fashion using his forms of socialization (Vergesellschaftung). Simmel distinguishes fashion’s main double function - to connect some social groups and also to individualize. 

According to Simmel, Fashion satisfies the need for distinction, the tendency to differentiation, to change, to the allocation from total mass. Simmel states that people have a tendency to imitation and this gives them the satisfaction of not standing alone in their actions. Mostly those who are from middle and lower classes are most likely to imitate upper-class’s representatives’ behavior. Simmel states, that the elite initiates a fashion and the mass imitates. 

Simmel states, “Fashion is a product of a class distinction and operates like a number of other forms, honor especially, the double function of which consists in revolving within a given circle and at the same time emphasizing it as separate from others.” Hence, having fashionable items is a way to be separate or different and also to be a part of a particular group. 

Also, according to Simmel not only fashion is adopted from the elite, but also social behavior, style, manners and etc. (545) So that in making decisions on something people tend to rely on what they learned as fashionable.

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