Historiography of Sustainable Fashion Practices: From its Inception till Present

Abstract

In today’s design world sustainable fashion is the most trending and a developing design philosophy. It’s not only about reducing the carbon footprints but also to decrease the environmental impact of fashion manufacturing. Today, sustainability is engrained in every facet of creative industries, including the everchanging textiles and fashion domain. In past era Fast fashion used to be the major influence on fashion trends, which resulted in overconsumption, labour exploitation, and environmental hazard. Material heavily utilized includes synthetic fibres, ordinary cotton, hazardous chemicals which leads environmental pollution and started a vicious cycle of overconsumption of water and energy. The adverse impact of fast fashion practices in supply chain created a need for a discernible trend towards sustainable fashion. The above concerns ring the bells for the urgency to incorporate sustainability in fashion supply chain management practices.
Hence, the paper establishes the four primary dimensions to categorically evaluate the various aspects of sustainability in fashion supply chain. Firstly, to mindfully choose the materials which are sustainable in nature. Secondly, to attain supply chain transparency at its maximum potential. Thirdly, ethical labour standards for social sustainability. Last but not the least responsible retailing and consumer habits.
Going forward, sustainable fashion has become need of the day. Therefore it is reasonable to anticipate a continuous focus on the four primary dimensions as mentioned above. These dimensions can be achieved through, material innovation which includes the creation of novel environment friendly materials and technologies. Also the link between the changing sustainable fashion practices and their impact on consumer preferences in fashion industry is explored in this paper. Research also ventures into the mass production of fashion which disrupted localized production of pre-industrial era. The shift lead to the disruption of viable clothing practices, which eventually generated the need in modern times to implement the sustainable ways in current supply chain. The paper also discuss effect on the sustainability initiatives over the time by delving into the case studies.
The goal of this research is to analyse the most prominent fashion supply chain practices and their overall impact on environmental aspects and carbon footprints. The paper focuses on four dimensions ‘the pillars’ towards fashion sustainability and their study over the time, from pre-industrial era to the contemporary times. This put forward the necessity of sustainable practices to derive a better understanding of appropriate future solutions.