Can environmentalism kill fashion?

As my search for ethical things to buy continues, I find myself being more and more fussy about things. I’ll admit that I do have lapses into bad habits when it comes to buying underwear and bargain CDs on the odd occasion but most of the time I do try to find the most ethical way to buy. I’ve even switched to lip balm from Burt’s bees which doesn’t contain petroleum products (after I’ve finished up the old one first), organic toothpaste and paraben free hair products.

I love the way that ethical shopping is becoming more mainstream; this month Marie Claire magazine dedicated a whole issue to green glam. My only concern with this consumerist version of ethical shopping is that it’s still shopping. OK, you can buy an organic or fair-trade dress that’s £132 from an ethical online store such as Adili but that’s expensive to most of us and there’s no transparency is where the money is going. I think given the choice between high priced ethical good and standard high street prices, the high street is going to win. But then if you can save £100 by shopping on the high street and then donate a percentage of your savings to a suitable charity (such as a child labour charity) then surely that can’t be bad? Even something simple like an organic t-shirt can seem pretty pricey plus if it’s from a high street store is it really that much better?

Fashion is such a wasteful industry and disposable fashion can be just as damaging to the environment as air travel so you can see why Traid started. Traid is a charity that collects and recycles old clothes by repairing them and reselling them, the money raised is then used to fund sustainable development projects. Traid works at both reducing waste and making a difference in the world and it makes me want to buy things just so that I’m supporting it. It’s very difficult to see how fashion can be sustainable at all as the nature of fashion means throwing out unfashionable items regularly just to stay in vogue. The phrase ‘make do and mend’ is bandied about a lot but seems totally incompatible with fashion. I wonder if our new found love of saving the planet will impact on the fashion industry. Sustainable fashion is probably an oxymoron so maybe environmentalism will overthrow the tyrannical reign of fashion.