Can Fashion Save The Planet?

Designers the world over are making a slow but steady shift towards sustainable fashion, but does the average consumer know what eco-friendly fashion really is? Sitanshi Talati-Parikh investigates

The sobering 2017 documentary RiverBlue follows international river conservationist Mark Angelo as he brings into focus how some of the world’s key rivers are being destroyed by the mass manufacturing of clothing. Angelo asserts that any major global fashion brand uses approximately 28 trillion gallons of fresh water every year. And that rivers that supply drinking water are being polluted by hazardous chemicals like mercury, cadmium and lead from the fabric dyes that filter into them. These chemicals do not break down, and travel around the world destroying aquatic life and causing damage to humans in the form of cancer and sensory loss.

As consumers, we tend to chase beauty over benefits: if it looks good, it couldn’t have harmed anything on its way. There are no aubergine-hued pollutants in the rivers, no underage children making those sensational ruffles, and no worker was paid inadequately to sew those pastel sequins on. Are we wrong, ignorant or simply apathetic? Perhaps all of the above. The True Cost, a film on the fashion industry, brings to the forefront the materialism that drives the economy of fashion, and the heavy price that is paid for cost-effective fast fashion. Parallelly, brands are voraciously driving new trends, while discounting the previous season’s styles. How many pairs of jeans is enough, when baggy or cropped is in one month, and skinny or bootleg fit next month’s #goals? “The consumer didn’t wake up one morning, saying, ‘I want to buy five pairs of jeans.’ We were literally introduced to this concept by the fashion industry,” a commentator in RiverBlue says.