Chapter 4: Change Designers: Uprooting the Fashion System Through Collective Action

By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:

The need to examine the dominant social paradigm of fashion production and consumption is well established (Ritch & McColl, 2021). For over two decades, there have been allegations that fashion workers are exploited to provide consumers with ever decreasing prices (Hearson & Morser, 2007; Holenstein, 2020). More recently, there has been growing awareness of the toll that faster, cheaper, and more globalised fashion production has upon the environment, contributing to the climate crisis (United Nations, 2020) as well as exploiting people. Despite all this, the mainstream fashion industry continues to promote inexpensive fashion using marketing tactics to encourage impulse overconsumption (Niinimäki et al., 2020; Ritch, 2023). Yet, in the fringes of fashion practice, there are many grassroots movements and smaller organisations challenging the dominant paradigm. They are crafting new environmental paradigms that allow consumers to practise fashion in a way that does not induce inequalities and environmental degradation. Instead, these new concepts place fashion practice back into localities and allow consumers (or citizens; Alexander, 2022) greater engagement with fashion and control over the consequences of their behaviour. Take, for example, the fashion landscape in Scotland, where there are incredible individuals and organisations forging transformative sustainable fashion pathways. Yet, the landscape is disconnected and fragmented (Lowe, 2020). As a result, there is great energy fuelled by frustration and determination to connect, collaborate, and work collectively towards a nationwide sustainable fashion transformation. Many consumers in Scotland are unaware of these organisations and that there are alternative routes to acquire and practise fashion. Community-led nonprofit Sustainable Fashion Scotland (SFS) was launched in February 2020, led by Mairi Lowe (co-author) and Liisa Lehtinen while studying for their Master degrees at Glasgow Caledonian University. The mission was to identify a means to connect the fragmented fashion landscape and community in Scotland and support fashion practitioners to cultivate a more sustainable industry through collective action.