1. Why should we practice slow fashion?
Going ‘slow fashion’ means we’re building a new vision where designers, buyers, retailers and consumers are more aware of the impacts of products on workers, communities and ecosystems. It benefits the whole ecosystem, which permeates far beyond the garment-manufacturing chain.
2. How or in what ways can the consumer help or contribute to the idea of slow fashion?
Buy responsibly. Look beyond the appeal of buying cheap goods. It’s not anti-consumption, it’s alternative consumption. Choose consciously too – buy timeless designs and styles that are not season specific. Shift from quantity to quality.
Finally buy from environmentally, socially and ethically sourced labels.
3. Since it’s a collective effort to reduce waste and minimize pollution, in what ways can a fashion designer and/or fashion retailer do to help the environment?
We need to audit the processes and resources required to manufacture clothing. We need to take time to design and plan the collections because overconsumption and overproducing creates a huge amount of textile waste.
It is best to produce using environmentally, socially and ethically sourced materials. Avoid synthetic fibres as it increases carbon footprints. Aside from that, hire only manufacturing facilities with good record of fair treatment of workers. Reject sweat shop labour, inferior work environments and unfair wages.
4. How do we explain to consumers that reproduced or up-cycled clothes are just as good as a new one?
First, everybody needs to know upcycling stops adding stuff to a world that is already overwhelmed with material things! Clothes we don’t upcycle often end up in landfills, and that will continue to pollute the earth!
Consumers need to see the potential of creating something new and beautiful from the existing old! We need to widely educate the consumers how upcycling (something our friends at Kloth Care are actively doing) can have a deep impact on saving the environment. It’s kinder to your wallet too !
5. What is your vision in the future in producing sustainable collection?
The change is coming! Like the many sustainability issues the world needs to address, the fashion industry, too has a complex web of factors to navigate through, including human rights, price, supply chains and materials. Which means for sustainable fashion to be successful, both consumers and companies alike must rethink the world of fashion. It would be amazing to have sustainable fashion grow and become an umbrella of earth-helping goodness!
I would like to see more technological innovations and solutions made available and affordably! Maybe new textiles or a new kind of fabric that is sustainable? Or perhaps a revolutionary pattern software to manufacture entire collections to a high level of accuracy?
Ultimately for us, as a brand, moving towards the slow fashion has a lot to do with the slow-living lifestyle we are adapting. We want to emphasise slower approaches to the various aspects of everyday life, like taking a step back and being conscious of life helps us identify our value as a brand and a unit. It’s also about mindfully discovering what an average person can do to affect change.
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