Fashion Cultures Revisited by Stella Bruzzi Pamela Church Gibson

Author:Stella Bruzzi, Pamela Church Gibson [Stella Bruzzi, Pamela Church Gibson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415680066
Goodreads: 14872759
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2000-12-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Louise Crewe

TAILORING AND TWEED

Mapping the spaces of ‘slow fashion’

Introduction

Modern clothes have all the disposability of fast food and a trip to a chain store could be as instantly fulfilling as a Big Mac. And the thrill will last about as long.

(Shulman, in O’Dwyer 2009)

THIS CHAPTER FOCUSES on the temporalities and spaces of fashion, looking specifically at models of slow luxury fashion, craft, quality and knowledge. The conceptual basis for the discussion lies in recent debates about the geographies of fashion that suggest an ongoing descent into an industry founded on a lowering of quality, and a future based on fast, cheap, throwaway fashion produced under distant, exploitative work conditions (Crewe 2008; Siegle 2011). Although fast fashion has been a key strategy in the industry’s attempt to maintain competitive advantage, it is also widely acknowledged to be economically, socially and environmentally unsustainable (Brown 2010; Fletcher and Grose 2012; Minney et al. 2011; Siegle 2011). While the global supply of cheap, fashionable clothes may have been a perfect competitive strategy for fashion retailers, it brings with it a set of social, economic and environmental conditions that are altogether more troubling. And while the fashion industry has been remarkably adept at heading off environmental and social censure, it has also enabled the creation of both dirty, ugly business practices and giddily accelerated cycles of consumption with long and often invisible production footprints and short (and equally invisible) consumption lifetimes. The volume of clothing purchases has increased by over a third in the past decade, largely because of the growth in cheap, fast fashion. As a result waste volumes are high and rising (Allwood in Lean 2007: 16). Consumers are buying more than they need and cheap prices are fanning hasty, thoughtless and, at times, needless consumption. The faster fashion moves, the more toxic its effects, and globalised production systems are threatening a range of geographical spaces, from cotton fields to sweatshops, high streets to landfill sites: not only are our homes becoming filled with barely worn garments, but a volume of clothing and textiles equivalent to approximately three-quarters of purchases is buried in landfill in the UK each year.

The longer-term implications of these tendencies are of note both economically and theoretically. Cost, value and the worth of objects have become confused. Why do we buy what we buy? How do we begin to understand object value? Do we care any longer about our clothes? What now informs our consumption practices? How aware are we that the life cycle of garments in terms of production, consumption and use is being rapidly accelerated, that clothes are shoddily and hastily constructed, their post-purchase lifetime intentionally truncated? Disposable fashion is unsettling, objects become expendable, things feel impermanent and consumers become restless awaiting the next quick fix, a fix that ultimately rarely satisfies. We are left hungry, wanting, desiring the next purchase. And as long as consumers continue to be seduced by cheap, fast clothing, mass market retailers will continue to tread the path of least resistance

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