Contents
1 Introduction to Sustainability in Fashion 1
Claudia E. Henninger, Daniella Ryding,
Panayiota J. Alevizou and Helen Goworek
2 The Epiphanic Sustainable Fast Fashion Epoch 11
Charlotte Rutter, Kate Armstrong and Marta Blazquez Cano
3 Sustainability and the Fashion Industry:
Conceptualizing Nature and Traceability 31
Annamma Joy and Camilo Peña
4 The Influence of Eco-Labelling on Ethical
Consumption of Organic Cotton 55
Joy Bucklow, Patsy Perry and Elaine Ritch
5 An Exploration of Consumers’ Perceptions Towards
Sustainable Fashion – A Qualitative Study in the UK 81
Zhen Lai, Claudia E. Henninger and Panayiota J. Alevizou
6 Ethical Consumption Patterns and the Link to
Purchasing Sustainable Fashion 103
Claudia E. Henninger and Pallavi Singh
7 Determining Effective Sustainable Fashion
Communication Strategies 127
Sara Li-Chou Han, Claudia E. Henninger, Phoebe Apeagyei
and David Tyler
8 Fashion in a Circular Economy 151
Kirsi Niinimäki
9 Investigating the Relationship Between
Consumer Attitudes and Sustainable Fashion
Product Development 171
Angharad McLaren and Helen Goworek
10 Social Sustainability in Apparel Supply Chains:
Organizational Practices for Managing
Sub-Contracted Homework 193
Archana and Marsha A. Dickson
11 User Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction in the App
Sharing Economy 217
Sarah Netter
12 A Review of Secondhand Luxury and Vintage Clothing 245
Daniella Ryding, Menglu Wang, Carly Fox and Yanan Xu
Index 267
List of Figures
Fig. 3.1 Current vs. proposed fashion apparel model 45
Fig. 4.1 Estimated global cotton production 2014 (GMO
Compass 2014; Textile Exchange 2016) 60
Fig. 4.2 Product factors and attributes involved in consumer
purchase decision for fashion 63
Fig. 6.1 CRT – profiling ethical consumers 112
Fig. 6.2 CRT – profiling people, who prefer to shop at
independent shops 113
Fig. 8.1 The four models of DCE, design in a circular economy
(RSA great recovery, used with permission) 153
Fig. 8.2 Essi Karell’s system for modular fashion design
(Karell 2013, p. 117) 159
Fig. 8.3 Relooping Fashion project (Relooping Fashion 2016,
used with permission) 165
Fig. 10.1 Homework change model 198
Fig. 11.1 Conceptual model 223
List of Tables
Table 5.1 Summary of data collection 87
Table 6.1 Regression analysis with EthicalCon as dependent
variable 115
Table 6.2 Coefficient analysis with EthicalCon as dependent
variable 116
Table 6.3 Regression analysis with PrefInd as dependent
variable – model summary 117
Table 6.4 Coefficient table of regression with PrefInd
as dependent variable 118
Table 7.1 Study participants 132
Table 7.2 Key theme: consumers 135
Table 7.3 Key theme: communication 138
Table 7.4 The circular economy fashion communication canvas 142
Table 8.1 Quality in clothing (Niinimäki 2011) 154
Table 8.2 Design attributes for long-term satisfaction 156
Table 8.3 Design approaches for CE 166
Table 11.1 Five dimensions to measure customer perceptions
of service quality 222
Table 11.2 Overview of sampled reselling and swapping
peer-to-peer apps in iTunes 225
Table 11.3 Overview coding scheme 227
Table 11.4 Descriptive statistics aggregated level 230
Introduction to Sustainability in Fashion
1.1 Idea for Sustainability in Fashion
Anything that gets your blood racing is probably worth doing (Hunter S. Thompson)
For us as editors, sustainability in the fashion industry is a contemporary mega-trend that gets our blood racing. In the UK alone, the fashion industry contributes £26 billion directly to the British economy (BFC 2012, 2014), accounts for 2% of the world’s Gross Domestic Product, and thus equates to an approximate value of £2.5 trillion (Fashion United 2016). These figures indicate that the global fashion industry plays a vital role in everyday life with one in every six people being employed within the fashion/apparel sector (Brown 2011).
The economic opportunities in the fashion industry have however come with a bleak backdrop, which has tarnished to some extent, the enthusiasm for those who take a keen interest in fashion. The Rana Plaza factory collapse (Parveen 2014), which witnessed more than 1,000 deaths and in excess of 2,000 fatal injuries, marks one of the greatest public outcries for more transparency within supply chains for security and ethical trading practices. Sustainability in recent times has thus become a priority for many fashion organisations, the overall industry having demonstrated one of the highest levels of negligence concerning exploitation of the workforce, social well-being, and drainage of the world’s natural resources, when it comes to garment production. Integral to success and within the context of a circular economy, is first and foremost, an understanding of how to unlock vertical supply chains with a view to developing new business models, which contribute to improved sustainable value. Of equal importance is the need to fully understand how both government and businesses might work together to broaden the prospect of slowing down consumption, thereby convincing consumers to make more environmentally friendly choices as a way of enacting out a changing social value system. Yet, whilst sustainability in the fashion industry has received increased attention, the fashion and textiles context still remains underrepresented within the mainstream marketing and management literature (e.g. O’Cass and Lim 2001; Matthiesen and Phau 2005; Buresti and Rosenberger III 2006; Henninger 2015). The idea for our book Sustainability in Fashion – A Cradle to Upcycle Approach – emerged further to attendance at various multi-disciplinary conferences, many of which have started to dedicate research streams to issues of sustainability in the fashion industry within global contexts. Our book – Sustainability in Fashion – offers international application with a view to contextualising important developments within the fashion industry. The contributors use their diverse backgrounds and expertise to provide a contemporary approach in examining key theoretical concepts, constructs, and developments.
1.2 Sustainability and the Fashion Industry
Sustainability has previously been described as a fuzzy concept (Markusen 1999) that lacks a clear-cut definition. Thus, sustainability can be and is described in multifaceted ways and can incorporate an economic, social, and/or environmental angle. To reiterate this point further, sustainability is an intuitively understood concept that is interpreted in a very subjective manner and thus, person and/or context dependent (e.g. Gunder 2006; Henninger et al. 2016). This aspect is further reflected in this book, as all contributors discuss issues of sustainability within the fashion industry from very unique perspectives, with none of the authors necessarily defining the term in exactly the same way. This is further touched upon in the next section.
Sustainability in itself is not a new phenomenon, but rather has been investigated as early as the 1960s when consumers started to be more concerned about the impact their consumption patterns have on the natural environment (e.g. Peattie 1995; McCormick 2001; SustAinability 2011). The media reports about various waves of sustainability that have put a spotlight on the fashion industry – predominantly for negative reasons – such as labour right issues, anti-fur campaigns, rivers that turn red due to pollution, and clothing that ends up in landfill (e.g. EFF 2008; WRAP 2012; Matthews 2015). Although these negative examples seemingly overshadow the fashion industry, recent years have seen a dramatic change in the industry landscape. More and more retailers promote sustainable initiatives, which can take on a variety of shapes and actions. Examples of these initiatives are: Shwopping, which emerged as a new trend in 2012. Marks & Spencer is the key driver behind this initiative, creating it as part of their Plan A sustainability plan (M&S 2016); or H&M’s ‘Close the Loop’ recycled clothing collection (Sowray 2015). At the same time, a majority of newly established businesses see sustainability less as an ‘add-on’, but rather incorporate aspects of sustainability – in form of environment, social, and/or economic components – at the core of their organisations. These changes may not come as a surprise, as companies continuously seek to react to consumer demands for more sustainable and environmentally friendly alternatives. Seeing as the fashion industry is the second most polluting industry globally (Egan 2011; BSR 2012; Henninger et al. 2016), we feel these changes cannot come soon enough.