Fashion’s Sustainability Woes: Intention, Inequity, and the Implicit Beliefs Blocking Systemic Transformation
Unexpected Lessons from Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to Be an Anti-Racist”
(To listen to me read an audio version of this article, see here.)
Individual beliefs are the starting point for systemic change
On the one hand, I am utterly disillusioned-bordering-on-pissed-off by sustainable-fashion-as-usual. By “sustainable-fashion-as-usual” I mean the tools and strategies we currently deploy to do something about the sector’s negative impact: certifications, preferred materials, commitments to cut CO2 emissions, transparency, audits, climate, circularity, and beyond. It all feels like futile tinkering around the edges premised on an incorrect problem diagnosis.
On the other hand, dismantling and rebuilding an entirely different approach that would actually drive systemic change feels overwhelming if not close to impossible. How do we, as individuals, take on systemic change? By shopping differently? By becoming an activist? By advocating policy change that for the most part puts an approach we already know isn’t working, into law? By working a sustainability job? By having good intentions? Meh. If I’m being honest, my impulse is to sidestep “sustainable-fashion-as-usual” entirely to have a thoroughly different kind of conversation — but what is this other conversation even about?
The bottom line is that we — and the sector’s current approach to sustainable fashion — exist in a world where — regardless of our intentions or commitment to the cause — we all do things every day that lead to outcomes that collectively none of us want.
Personally, this has led to feelings of grief, desperation, helplessness and the decision to opt for a rather rogue professional path that’s hard to explain at dinner parties.
A couple years ago, thanks to a wise mentor’s tip, I came across Theory U, Otto Scharmer and the Presencing Institute. One of the simplest and most practical tools I walked away with was the “iceberg model.” The basic premise is that we spend most of our time focused on the undesirable behaviors and events visible above the water’s surface. These undesirable behaviors and events are held in place by powerful but typically invisible underlying structures. By “structures” I mean the rules of the game, which could be formal rules or informal norms. Structures, in turn, are created and maintained by deeply held — and usually implicit — individual beliefs and mindsets.
Theory U opened my imagination to something more exciting and ambitious than shopping differently or becoming an activist, yet still actionable at an individual level: maybe the role of individuals in driving systemic change is, first and foremost, about identifying and letting go of deeply held beliefs that collectively keep us locked in this loop of outcomes we all contribute to but that none of us really wants.
Ever since, I’ve been on a quest to articulate the implicit beliefs that underpin the sector’s current approach to sustainability. To this end, the podcast I host and co-founded, Manufactured, recently launched a miniseries called “Crossover moments”. The idea was to explore key moments of personal transformation, moments when people began to question, and ultimately reject or let go of, conventional approaches to sustainable fashion. What were the beliefs they held prior to their “crossover moment”? Why did they decide to let go of these beliefs? And what did they replace them with?
An Incorrect Problem Diagnosis: Why we (implicitly) believe bad stuff happens in fashion
At their core, all — yes, all — of the tools and strategies we currently have within the “sustainable-fashion-as-usual” umbrella are about making sure entities behave in the “right” way.
Think about it: we call for companies to set science-based targets so that we can hold them accountable for delivering on those commitments. We ask suppliers to sign codes of conduct and achieve various certifications so that we can be assured of their commitment to behaving a certain way. We audit to ensure they’re delivering against those commitments, and we call for legislation holding brands and retailers legally responsible for ensuring their supply chains operate a certain way.
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that, implicitly, most of us believe that our sustainability woes are the product of ill-intentioned people or entities.
Why else would we have come up with a set of tools and strategies that suggest that, with the right accountability and oversight, we would all be able to stop doing things that collectively lead to outcomes that none of us want?
This applies to the evil brand trope — whose intentions are questioned to the extent that they are unwilling or unable to use their power to whip other less powerful entities into shape. It also applies to evil factory owner tropes — whose intentions (or, if we’re being only slightly more generous, inadequate capacity) are presumed to be taking advantage of this lack of oversight to cheat, cut corners, and put profit above all else. (Sidenote: though both tropes certainly exist, they are not created equal).
Coming back to the “Crossover Moments” miniseries. The word that kept coming up, conversation after conversation was Dehumanizing. The way we do sustainable fashion is dehumanizing.
In hindsight, I should have seen this coming. My own disillusionment with sustainability-as-usual stems from my time as a garment factory manager. I made unsustainable choice after unsustainable choice, not because I wanted to, but because I operated with certain constraints. Did that make me some kind of evil boogeyman? I felt judged — including by my former self — the student of human rights. I felt like few people in the sustainable-fashion-as-usual universe understood or even saw our burden: that factory owners and factory managers are being asked to reinvent their entire businesses and operating contexts — for free — all whilst implicitly being labeled the problem.
In parallel, I’ve been reading Ibram X. Kendi’s book How to be an Anti-Racist — which he says is ultimately a book “about that basic struggle we’re all in, the struggle to be fully human.”
When we say (without ever really saying) that our sustainability woes are the result of bad intentions, we are also saying that there’s something wrong with a particular value chain group. And, as Kendi says, to say something is wrong with a group is to say they are inferior. This, ultimately, is what makes sustainable-fashion-as-usual so dehumanizing.
Kendi uses a term I hadn’t come across before: assimilationist racism. In a nutshell, it’s the idea that people of color might have the right intent or capacity to be morally superior but simply lack the right enabling conditions. In other words, they are still inferior, but just temporarily so.
I was so struck by this term: in the world of sustainable-fashion-as-usual, isn’t this what all those compliance audits are about? Isn’t this what all those supplier capacity building programs are all about? Isn’t our whole sustainability toolbox one big attempt to create these so-called “enabling conditions” that implicitly suggest temporary inferiority? My inclination is yes.
A final note on this point for the skeptics: I am not saying intention is completely irrelevant. What I’m saying is that if we focus our attention exclusively on intention, we’ll miss the much more powerful forces driving unsustainable behavior.
Why does bad stuff actually happen in fashion? Constraints are caused by inequity
If intention isn’t what’s causing our sustainability woes, what is? My personal experience, and the one seemingly echoed by many of the individuals participating in the Crossover Moments series, is that constraints are a far more powerful driver of behavior than intention.
I want to quote Kendi again. He says: “To be fully human, socially, is for us to recognize the connection between ourselves and every human being on earth… to be fully human, politically, is to think about what humans need to live fulfilling lives, and what powerful forces constrain humans.”
So what are these constraints that lead us all to make choices that contribute to collective outcomes that none of us wants? My personal experience is that it always comes back to one word: inequity.
For example, the reason paying higher wages is not straightforward for factory managers? Because cheap and flexible labor is a way for producers to cope with the fact that they disproportionately bear the risk of uncertain consumer demand (because they are the ones fronting all the costs of production). In other words: inequity.
The reason producers are, for the most part, unable to deliver on decarbonization targets? Because they’re often unable to access the capital they need to make necessary investments, and when they can, it’s unaffordable or insufficient. Because sometimes those investments increase operating costs, and their customers are unwilling to accept a higher price. Because they’re operating in contexts where local support (and resources) might be lacking. In other words: inequity.
The reason brands and retailers can — in the wake of scandal — claim a moral monopoly and suggest that they didn’t know what their suppliers were doing, or where their goods were being produced? Because they chose to offload their own financial risk onto their suppliers — primarily in the global South, many of whom have neither the luxury of being able to negotiate nor the cash reserves to cope with it. In other words: inequity.
The list could go on.
For those of you thinking: yes, but this is what calls for better purchasing practices are about! That’s part of our toolbox too! I disagree. Yes, asking brands to stop eating into supplier lead times or canceling orders or retroactively asking for discounts is a good thing. Yes, it would be great if this was built into contracts and made a legal requirement. Yes, brands getting better at forecasting would be a good thing. But the reason brands can engage in all these unethical purchasing behaviors is really quite simple: they have no money on the line. In other words: inequity.
Our talk of purchasing practices might (emphasis on might) be pushing brands towards better behavior, but what part of it is actually tackling inequity — meaning redistributing financial risk and reward? If financial risk and reward were distributed more equitably, unethical purchasing practices would disappear.
I want to return to the iceberg model. We must let go of the belief that ill-intent is the root cause of our sustainability woes — it’s a belief getting in the way of transformation. Systemic change, and meaningfully changing our industry for the better, requires a lot more than declaring our commitment to the cause, or even taking up the cause as a profession. It requires acknowledging the value chain inequity in our sector, embracing the belief that value chain inequity is what constrains us, and asking what causes it.
The opposite of unsustainable isn’t sustainable, it’s “anti-unsustainable”
I want to return to my desire for an entirely different kind of sustainable fashion conversation. The same wise mentor who recommended Theory U also once said to me: “There are two parts to creating a different conversation: creating the spaces for it to happen, and creating the vocabulary to have it.”
Indeed, part of shifting the mindsets and beliefs that underpin our sustainable fashion iceberg — so to speak — is creating a new vocabulary, a new language for talking about our sustainability woes.
The first step towards this end is some new definitions. Once again, Kendi is helpful here because although the definitions he puts forward in his book How to Be an Anti-Racist apply to an entirely different context and conversation, I can’t help but see the parallels with our sector.
So, I want to close by sharing some of Kendi’s definitions, but swap out the terminology related to race with terms relevant to our sector.
Unsustainable: Any policy that leads to value chain inequity.
Value chain inequity: When two or more value chain groups are not standing on approximately equal footing.
Unsustainable idea: Any notion that suggests one value chain group is inferior or superior to another value chain group in any way. Unsustainable ideas argue that the inferiorities and superiorities of value chain groups explain value chain inequities in society.
Anti-unsustainable: The opposite of unsustainable isn’t sustainable, it’s anti-unsustainable. One believes unsustainable outcomes are rooted in groups of people, the other in power or policies.
Finally, a quick word about how Manufactured will be taking this conversation forward. Our next miniseries is all about textile factories in Leicester. Yes, that’s right, Leicester. Bear with me. In recent years there have been more and more calls for stronger global North legislation to hold global brands and retailers accountable for what happens in their supply chains — which, lest I sound like a broken record, once again suggests our problem is keeping unwieldy actors on the straight and narrow.
But if oversight is the antidote to our sustainability woes, how do we explain Leicester? Situated in a ‘developed’ country and leading superpower, labor rights abuses in Leicester have been described as an “open secret” within the industry. How do we explain the fact that these abuses are happening in the heart of the UK, a place where legal accountability and governance are allegedly so strong?
Find out in the next series of Manufactured, coming soon.
