Welcome back to our blog, ethical fashionistas! In this post today, we are looking at something a bit more different, something a bit more global, with the glitz and the glamour. I welcome you to the topic on fashion week and runway shows. Fashion weeks have been around for the longest of times, dating back to the 1800s in Paris till modern day (Fashion Week Online, n.d.). They take place in numerous big cities, but specifically in Paris, New York, London, Tokyo. A myriad of high fashion brands set up different runway shows everyday to showcase their new seasonal collections. Since it is a seasonal collection, these types of fashion shows usually occur according to seasons annually in the various mentioned locations. Furthermore, these fashion shows can accumulate to a substantial number because they occur at different dates in different places. Additionally, fashion seasons are categorised as spring/summer, autumn/winter, resort and pre-fall seasons, and every 2 shows are held for each season (We Connect Fashion, n.d.).
As seen from the above, there is quite a substantial amount of fashion shows being held per year ranging across the different locations. Thus, imagine the amount of pollution we are contributing when people travel to these countries for the different shows. Specifically, imagine the amount of carbon that is being released into the air when so many people are travelling to these different places to view these prestigious fashion shows. According to (Paton, 2020), it was found that in 2018, 241,000 tonnes of carbon was released taking into account only the carbon released by people (designers, models etc) that travelled (by air) to the other countries for their fashion shows. This is equivalent to lighting up the whole of times square 58 times (Paton, 2020). In fact, the New York Fashion Week is the biggest producer of carbon amongst the rest of the fashion capitals because of the nature of its long-haul flights, contributing to 37% of total annual emissions (Paton, 2020). Hence, one of the main culprits of carbon pollution can be attributed to these fashion shows. Furthermore, this is merely taking into account the travel done by air, the involvement of other vehicular services and the processes going into the building and making of these fashion shows have not been taken into account.
On the contrary, since climate justice has been on the forefront of many news outlets lately, a number of these designer brands have stepped up to try to alleviate or ease the carbon problems they have created. Specifically, Gucci announced in its 2019 fashion show that it would go carbon neutral by offsetting its carbon emissions. The 2019 show at Dior also consisted of 100 trees in the runway setup that were supposed to be sent to community gardens after the show ended. Other designer brands like Saint Laurent made sure that the lights in their show were powered by biofuels (Friedman, 2019). Although all these can be considered as a step in the right direction for fashion shows to go green, is this sufficient? It seems like these brands are competing with each other on who can be the most sustainable because going green has suddenly become an ‘in thing’.
In the end, this sustainability ‘trend’ has ended up as a marketing tool for companies to engage in green washing for the purpose of attracting more consumers to buy their goods (Niinimäki, 2015). However in reality, these designer brands are huge and have the ability to contribute to being more sustainable apart from the actions mentioned above. If they had invested the same amount of time and effort into putting up these fashion shows into actually trying to reduce the amount of carbon emissions or the amount of energy resources that are taken up to produce one of their shows, a significant change will occur.
In a nutshell, fashion shows use up an extensive amount of resources from their production, planning, and execution process. They also contribute to significant carbon emissions amongst other pollution too. It has to be acknowledged that many of these designer companies are trying to be more sustainable through their various strategies as aforementioned. However, we must pause and think if these intentions behind these companies are genuine or are they just a method of greenwashing? Although I am not denying the fact that what these designer companies are doing is a significant step in the right direction, I personally feel that more can be done to tackle such a systemic issue. For example, with Covid-19, many of these fashion shows were cancelled and most of them were even held online. This greatly saves the amount of carbon that was being released and also goes to show that big changes can happen when the right circumstances are there. Fashion companies do not have to solely stick to ‘green’ gimmicks, but also greatly improve on the sustainability of the processes that make these fashion shows possible.
References:
Fashion Week Online. (n.d.). History of Fashion Week. Retrieved 1 November 2020 from https://fashionweekonline.com/history-of-fashion-week
Friedman, V. (2019). Fashion’s latest trend: Eco bragging rights. Retrieved 1 November 2020 from https://fashionweekonline.com/history-of-fashion-week
Niinimäki, K. (2015). Ethical foundations in sustainable fashion. Textiles and Clothing Sustainability, 1(3), 1-11.
Paton, (2020). Fashion’s Latest Trend: Eco Bragging Rights. Retrieved 1 November 2020 from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/12/fashion/figuring-out-fashion-weeks-carbon-problem.html
We Connect Fashion (n.d.). Fashion Buying Calendar, Sell & Delivery Dates. Retrieved 1 November 2020 from https://www.weconnectfashion.com/articles/fashion-buying-calendar-sell-delivery-dates
WTVOX. (2020). Copenhagen Fashion Week – Solution To Sustainable Fashion?. Retrieved 1 November 2020 from https://wtvox.com/fashion/copenhagen-fashion-week-solution-to-sustainable-fashion/
