Deputy Editor-in-Chief Simona Lomangino talks with Dr Ritch, Reader in Fashion, Marketing and Sustainability at Glasgow Caledonian University about overconsumption, fast fashion, sustainability and ethical consumer behaviors.
I‘ve always been interested in all things fashion, but as someone trying to be conscious with my clothing purchases, I buy from charity shops, small local businesses and TK Maxx, where I can find good deals from the biggest fashion houses. Most recently I came across a beautiful Tommy Hilfiger blue knitted sweater for the modest price of £29. On its label, I saw its original price: £149. In this economy?! How can a sweater be that expensive? And how can Tommy Hilfiger justify the original price when they produce much of their clothes in low-cost labour countries like China and Vietnam, where labour conditions in clothing factories are widely known to be poor and often exploitative? What is it really that we’re paying so much for – the brand or the clothes themselves?
The Glasgow Guardian this month met with Dr Elaine Ritch, research lead in Fashion, Marketing and Tourism and Events at Glasgow Caledonian University. Ritch is currently investigating retail values to better understand value trade-offs between online and high street retailers.
Let’s start with some definitions – what is overconsumption in fashion and what are its implications with capitalism?
“Overconsumption has emerged from the desire to continuously make profit as opposed to the craft of fashion. If you look at fashion movements throughout our history, they reflected what’s going on in the world – Dior’s New Look could be a good example of that post-war return to femininity and abundance. There are elements of research and innovation, craftsmanship and innovative pattern-cutting creativity to curate an aesthetic that is symbolic of the times. This involves thinking about the materials that we use, and innovations in materials. Whereas fast fashion is all about stimulating sales rather than new design. There is nothing definitive about fashion that comes from fast fashion. It is heavily marketed in order to trigger impulsive and regular, frequent impulsive consumption. And so that really is about profit generation rather than the craft of fashion itself. For instance, when something sells well, the brands will look to exploit that and they might produce it in a number of different colors: something that doesn’t cost a lot of money, but will maximize sales.”
What are the implications of overconsumption with big fashion houses? Is it fair to raise the price of a sweater to £149?
“I think what we’ve got to think about is how much it costs to produce it, make it and for everyone to get their part within the supply chain. For sure, some brands are overpriced and potentially follow the same route of production as fast fashion. However, you could also take the perspective that if we’re not paying the true cost of something then we might not be contributing to fairly paying all those involved in the supply chain; these are retailers, couriers and even independent fashion designers, who are designing and having their ideas stolen by those larger organizations. There are also alternative acquisition models, for example, renting clothes, as opposed to buying them, given that fast fashion doesn’t have much longevity in fashion anyway.”
Do you know if any of these big fashion houses use the same production processes of fast fashion? For example, Tommy Hilfiger – what is the difference? Am I just paying a lot for something done in the same way?
“There’s no way that we can know that. We do very much rely on exposure coming from factories, where people tell the real stories. The main problem is that we can’t trace our fashion, so we don’t have any idea where things are made. Reliance on those major brands becomes problematic because even they don’t really understand their supply chain. They are outsourcing to so many different factories that they can’t guarantee what happens in production. The better thing to do at that point would be to buy from smaller stores, where you have some kind of understanding of where it came from”.
As a consumer who’s trying to be sustainable, independent shops’ prices can be incredibly high. I saw a jumper in a small independent shop in Glasgow for £160. How can we tackle this in the modern world where wages are lower and lower?
“I think this is a dominant social paradigm of consumption in which we expect to buy more often rather than less. Historically, people bought fashion seasonally. The benefit of spending more on clothes is that they will fit better, they will look better, and you’ll be more comfortable. But I totally get that it is difficult when you’re a student. It’s also difficult, perhaps when you buy your first home, you’ve got your mortgage and stuff to buy for the home as well, or when people have children and children are really expensive. Affordability across a lifetime is often going to be problematic. And that’s why we need more community spaces where there’s people sharing it and maximizing resources that already exist. Also, I don’t think that fast fashion is necessarily fashion. It’s clothes, but it’s not distinctive.”
As you say – even with big fashion houses, we don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. Do you believe there is a way to achieve sustainable fashion?
“There’s an argument that anything we buy demands resources and therefore has an impact on the climate emergency. The best thing to do at that point would be to think about the circular economy and perhaps buying second-hand or renting something so that clothes that are already in existence are being maximized to their full utility as opposed to ending up in the sea in Africa or being burnt. Even fashion houses are accused of disposing of garments that have not been sold in an unethical way, like burning stalks, for example, which contributes to climate emissions.
“Everyone that has that piece of clothing becomes part of a back story. It’s called appreciative materialism, where we appreciate what it is that we’re buying. We hear more as well about people developing ‘capsule wardrobes’ or ‘minimalistic wardrobes’ where they have small items of clothing, but they do something different with the way in which they present themselves. There’s research that’s looked at people wearing the same dress, say for 50 days and recording how they styled it differently over those 50 days to create different looks.”
What do you think are the steps that someone who is making clothes can take to be sustainable and ethical in their clothes-making process?
“We teach that at GCU: we teach the processes of being sustainable and thinking about the circular economy from the design stage. Thinking about minimizing scenes, innovative pattern cutting, thinking about the additional materials also being compostable or fibres being reclaimed to do something different with them. We are working on a project just now and the students are looking at different replacements for zips, because zips are notoriously hard to recycle. So it starts from the beginning. It starts with thinking about pattern cutting, maximizing all of the materials so that there’s no waste, and reusing what’s already out there.”
The Glasgow Guardian would like to thank Dr Ritch. This interview was edited for concision.
