Slow Fashion
Slow and steady wins the race.
This timeless proverb is usually attributed to Aesop’s fable “The Tortoise and the Hare,” a classic tale that dates back all the way to the 6th century BCE. But even though this story was written thousands of years ago, its message resonates profoundly with the current state of the fashion industry.
We’ve spoken before about the “hare” in the fashion industry, Fast Fashion, a long-derided approach to fashion production that prioritizes profit over the well-being of people and our environment. This time, let’s take a look at the “tortoise,” Slow Fashion. According to Good On You, a website that provides sustainability ratings for fashion and beauty brands, Slow Fashion is an “awareness and approach to fashion that carefully considers the processes and resources required to make clothing.”
As its name suggests, Slow Fashion serves as the antithesis of Fast Fashion. However, Slow Fashion and Fast Fashion are not dualistic opposites. Rather, they serve as variant approaches to the production of clothing. Kate Fletcher, who coined the term Slow Fashion in 2007, asserted in an article for The Ecologist that “Slow is not the opposite of fast – there is no dualism – but a different approach in which designers, buyers, retailers and consumers are more aware of the impacts of products on workers, communities and ecosystems.”
The roots of Slow Fashion, and more broadly the sustainable fashion movement, date back all the way to the 1960s, when the hippie movement rejected consumerism and promoted natural materials such as hemp. Slow Fashion also finds inspiration from the Slow Food movement, founded by Carlo Petrini in Italy in 1986. Patrini’s movement of the 1980s sought to associate pleasure in food with awareness and responsibility by defending biodiversity, protecting cultural identities tied to food production, and advocating for the availability of consumer information for food products.
Slow Fashion takes these principles of choice, information, diversity, and identity and applies them to fashion. Slow Fashion brands customarily use high-quality, low-impact materials, and seek to source, produce, and sell their garments locally. Their garments are made-to-order to avoid unnecessary production, and they are often sold in smaller local stores rather than chain department stores. They avoid the latest fashion trends by targeting timeless looks, sometimes advertising permanent, “seasonless” collections instead of multiple releases per year. These practices help Slow Fashion brands avoid the toxic, fast-paced hustle and bustle of Fast Fashion.
Beyond changing the way brands produce their goods, the Slow Fashion movement also plays out at the consumer level. At its core, Slow Fashion asks the consumer to be mindful and aware of their consumption habits. It starts by asking yourself a few questions: Do you need something new, or can you shop through your closet for something you haven’t worn in a while? Have you considered the material of what you’re buying? Have you thought about its longevity? Who owns the brand you’re buying from? What are their values? The more we can insert brief pauses into our buying habits to ask ourselves these questions, the more we can make smart decisions that help us and our planet in the long run. By taking more time now to make good decisions, we end up at our goal in the end.
Slow Fashion has grown in popularity over the years, with organizations large and small tailoring their approaches to fit the movement’s core ideas. The Centre for Sustainable Fashion (CSF), for instance, is an award-winning University of the Arts London research, education and knowledge exchange centre that explores “fashion's political, cultural, ecological, economic, and social dimensions.” The CSF has committed to the core principles of the Slow Fashion movement, and they’re doing research to expand the industry’s sustainability efforts. There’s also Imagine5, a nonprofit environmental impact foundation that specializes in telling the story of a number of sustainability initiatives. They have a number of educational materials that educate audiences on Slow Fashion, and they partner with other environmental impact initiatives that align with the principles of the movement.
If you’re having trouble implementing these principles into your daily life, believe us, we understand. Committing to a more sustainable future for the fashion industry takes work, and it doesn’t happen all at once. But as the tortoise proved, long-term success begins with taking a few steps in the right direction:
“The Tortoise meanwhile kept going slowly but steadily, and, after a time, passed the place where the Hare was sleeping. But the Hare slept on very peacefully; and when at last he did wake up, the Tortoise was near the goal. The Hare now ran his swiftest, but he could not overtake the Tortoise in time.”
It’s time to start walking down the path of sustainability, folks. As always, we at Doo Dah Apparel are here to take that walk with you. Slowly, of course.
Alec Matulka
Doo Dah Apparel LLC.
