Responsible for eight per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions, the fashion industry as it is today is deeply polluting and “cannot sustain itself,” according to Sustainable Fashion Week UK. The industry creates vast amounts of waste, such as the 39,000 tons of clothing dumped in the Atacama desert each year. Fast fashion and rapidly changing fashion trends set a terrible example for responsible and sustainable industry and consumer behaviours. The fashion industry also holds the record for both the highest water consumption and the highest creation of waste water worldwide, as it is responsible for the generation of about 20 per cent of the world’s waste water. Fashion weeks, such as those in New York, Paris, and Milan, embody this idea of pollution and waste in their very essence. A “spectacle of excess,” these events attract tourists from all over the world, necessitating dozens of transcontinental flights. Building one-off runway shows that generate colossal waste, they are criticized as the least sustainable aspect of the industry.
However, the last few years have been witness to the emergence of sustainable fashion weeks, extolling eco-friendly practices, promoting sustainability in the sector, and attempting to be more sustainable themselves. For example, the London Fashion Week, in collaboration with the Copenhagen Fashion Week (CPHFW), developed a sustainability requirements framework for participating brands. For Cecilie Thorsmark, CEO of the CPHFW, Fashion Week may “drive positive change within the industry.” Indeed, fashion weeks have long surpassed their role as simple commercial venues. As the major communication events for the whole fashion sector, they have become “highly symbolic public spectacles” reaching a large audience, and thus a platform for activism and political expression. In light of this, Vivienne Westwood advocated for environmental causes through their Homo Loquax runway show at the London Fashion Week of 2019.
On the other hand, these “sustainable” fashion shows seem awfully similar to everything done before. They remain first and foremost a business and an investment that brands make. The New York Fashion Week, rising in attendance in the past few years, saw the cost of running a fashion show explode, with numbers going from the $300,000 spent by Willy Chavarria to $400,000 by Collina Strada.
This brings to mind the danger of greenwashing, a term first coined by Jay Westerveld in 1986 that describes when brands make exaggerated or misleading claims about how environmentally friendly their products or services are. In fact, some think the efforts brands make are, at best, superficial. These accusations may be well-informed: only a few weeks ago, the Danish Consumer Council and Tanja Gotthardsen, an anti-greenwashing expert, filed a complaint against the Copenhagen Fashion Week concerning their sustainability framework. They describe the standards set as abysmally low and not always respected, violating Danish sustainability laws on many points. To this point, Tanja Gotthardsen says, “It made me question whether the requirements were being enforced at all!” Despite the sustainability leadership role the CPHFW seemed to aspire to, sustainability requirements have been used more as a promotional asset for years than as a genuine endeavour.
Sustainable fashion itself also leads to many controversies. With a project to put vintage and upcycling back to the front of the stage, Gabriela Hearst, an ethical fashion designer from Uruguay, put up on this year’s Paris Fashion Week runway a mink coat made from repurposed pythons skins and schappe (leftover fiber from silk cocoons processing). This fuelled the eternal debate between the use of real fur – deemed unethical and cruel – as opposed to the use of synthetic fur, which is highly polluting and impossible to recycle.
Despite this rather grim portrait, there are glimmers of hope within the fashion industry. Some brands, like Stella McCartney, have adopted eco-friendly practices at every stage of production and seem to understand sustainability more and more as a conviction instead of a marketing opportunity. The brand, created in 2001, always incorporated a sustainable and ethical policy.
If traditional fashion weeks have been accused of greenwashing, the emergence of numerous new fashion weeks is not so alarming. These new fashion weeks appear far from western fashion centers, bringing to light not only much-needed ideals but also alternate visions of the fashion industry as a whole. In August 2024, the Costa Rica Fashion Week highlighted eco-friendly fashion through the designer Mauricio Alpizar and his clothes made from acacia fibers. In November 2024, the Sao Paulo Fashion Week revolved around the idea of “slow fashion.” In Nigeria, the Lagos Fashion Week focused on designers from underserved areas and sustainability, with 20 per cent of all products of the fashion shows being recycled or locally sourced.
This testifies to a larger embrace of sustainability in Africa, with Fashion Weeks in Accra, South Africa, or Kenya with the Tribal Chic Nairobi. The African fashion industry does not only follow trends coming from the fashion capitals of London, Paris, or New York, but also creates new trends, giving hope for the rise of new visions of fashion that better respect the environment. This not only improves sustainability in fashion in general, but also reinstates cultural diversity in Fashion and the creative power of Africa, Asia and South America as on par with Europe and North America.
From São Paulo to Lagos, these fashion weeks are enhancing diversity in the fashion world and setting the example for the necessary revolution that the rest of the industry needs to undergo.