Chapter 7: The Power of the Climate Activist and Potential for Meaningful Change in the Fashion Industry

Upon completion of this chapter, readers should be able to:

Scientists agree that the climate crisis is one of the biggest challenges facing the world in the twenty-first century (IPCC, 2022). As a response to the rising threat of it, many activist groups such as Extinction Rebellion (XR) and Fridays for Future (FfF) have emerged or gained popularity during the last few years (Portway, 2019), with millions of people regularly participating in climate strikes globally (Taylor, Watts, & Bartlett, 2019). Along with this, general consumer awareness of environmental and ethical issues has risen (Yang, Tang, Cheung, & Zhang, 2020) and most consumers now expect brands to address the climate crisis in some way (Ritch, 2020). The fashion industry is a particularly strong driver of the climate crisis, for example through pollution of waters, exploitation of natural resources and improper disposal of clothing (Hill & Lee, 2015). The United Nations (2020) has even named the fashion industry as the second most polluting industry after oil. The environmental effects of fashion are a major contributor to the climate crisis and environmental pollution (Gupta, Gwozdz, & Gentry, 2019). The over consumption of fast-fashion with its planned obsolescence and increase in fashion collections that are brought out each year (Gwozdz, Nielsen, & Müller, 2017) has been one of the key reasons for this. Despite its environmental and social issues, fast-fashion is still the most popular form of fashion consumption in the western markets (Henninger, Brydges, Iran, & Vladimirova, 2021). Some reasons for the ongoing popularity of fast-fashion are that sustainable fashion has to compete with many factors, like price, style, fit, quality and brand appeal (Nilssen, Bick, & Abratt, 2018). However, there are counter movements such as slow fashion, sustainable fashion, ethical fashion and collaborative fashion consumption, including second-hand fashion, that aim to reduce the fashion industry’s impact on the planet. Moreover, many existing fashion brands have made an effort to become more sustainable by introducing ethical fashion brand extensions (Hill & Lee, 2015) into the growing market of sustainable fashion (Lundblad & Davies, 2016). Despite the increasing availability of sustainable fashion consumption options however, literature has noted a disconnect between consumers’ attitudes and their actual behaviours – the attitude behaviour gap (e.g. Achabou, Dekhili, & Codini, 2020; Govind et al., 2017).