The Fashion Swamp: Degrowth!
How the radical economic concept became a fashion buzzword
News & Reviews Magazine
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The piece you’re reading now is by Divya Venkataraman. Divya is a writer, editor and presenter based in London. She writes across fashion, culture, travel and sustainability for publications like The Guardian, Harper’s Bazaar and more. Previously, she was an editor at Vogue Australia, GQ and Vogue Living, and also contributed regularly to Vogue Australia’s print editions. She has also been a regular contributor to the Sydney Morning Herald. Her work has appeared in publications such as British Vogue, The Australian and Meanjin.
Divya writes for News & Reviews Magazine each month. These are her last pieces, from the August, September, October, and November editions:
When we talk about sustainability in fashion it feels like there’s an elephant lurking not just in the room but on the actual stage of every regenerative textiles panel. Between the lines of every press release on recycled materials and on the guest list of every new sustainable brand’s launch party: Wouldn’t the most sustainable thing be to just… make less? To not, in fact, make at all? It’s the same in any for-profit consumables company in any industry. The constant pressure for growth and profit is critical to fashion businesses of all sizes, and it’s a tension that is sewed into the very seams of any brand that considers themselves to be sustainable. Because maybe the most sustainable thing would be for that brand to not exist.
In his punchy little book, Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World, Jason Hickel walks through these tensions and contradictions. He starts with the history and development of capitalism (which he differentiates from markets and businesses, which have existed since souks and small traders in the BCE) and then explains that the very economic foundation of modern capitalist society is the reason for the planet’s sustained ecological destruction and rising emissions. The fact that economies require constant growth to continue to exist (and to not plunge populations into a recession) means that they need to constantly use more and more resources—which then means that the environment is wrung out, bled dry, and emissions continue to be pumped into the air.
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