W6: The Slow Fashion Movement
The set reading this week was a literature review, ‘Slow fashion Consumer Behaviour’, written in 2022 by authors Mariana Domingos, Vera Teixeira Vale, and Silvia Faria. The slow fashion movement is a sustainable and ethical approach to fashion that emphasises quality over quantity and prioritises the use of environmentally friendly and socially responsible production practices. As defined by the authors, Slow Fashion “represents the need to adopt sustainable performance and a change in core values in the fashion industry” (Domingos et al, 2022, pp. 1). Although the Slow Fashion movement is something that many of us are seeing in recent years across social media, it’s a movement in which its core values have been around since the 1960’s, with the ‘Counterculture’ movement, sharing similar values including the rejection of fast-paced and disposable mainstream fashion and a desire for greater individual expression and authenticity. The slow fashion movement “encourages brands to embrace a quality-based rather than a time-based business philosophy based around slower production, ethical attitudes, and well-made and long-lasting products.” (Domingos et al, 2022, pp. 2), resulting in good quality products.
In the reading, the authors compared a series of research papers on the topic of Slow fashion and then came to some understandings themselves. They ended up looking at 25 different relevant papers and the main theories from each were split up into 7 categories, sustainability, marketing, culture, fashion, human behaviour, methods and business (Domingos et al, 2022). The groups with the highest representation of theories were human behaviour and sustainability, when discussing slow fashion. A mind map was then made in order to understand how consumers perceive slow fashion. From the research, the mind map focussed on key concepts associated with slow fashion: ethical values, sustainable consumption, consumer motivations, consumer attitudes, and awareness of sustainability (Domingos et al, 2022).
Social media influencers who are successful play a significant role in social movements, such as the slow fashion movement, by facilitating conversations within digital communities and sharing their knowledge and tips to those who follow and interact with their content.
There are many trends on social media platforms like TikTok, which gain lots of views and give inspiration to people, to think more ethically when buying clothes. Some of these include, Thrift with me and Thrifting Haul videos, encouraging people to be more environmentally sustainable, by purchasing second-hand items. There are creators making videos about upcycling and even doing challenges like Flipping Feb, where they take an item of clothing, they are currently not happy with and flip it into something they would wear, which means they are not just throwing away old clothes, which then minimises the amount of waste that ends up in landfills.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports “that Americans produce averagely 16 million tons of textile and apparel waste every year, of which only 15% was recycled” (Chi et al, 2021, pp. 102), so content surrounding the slow fashion movement can be very influential and educational to those who don’t know much about the social issue.
References:
Chi, T., Gerard, J., Yu, Y., & Wang, Y. (2021). A study of U.S. consumers’ intention to purchase slow fashion apparel: understanding the key determinants. International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education, 14(1), 101–112
Domingos, M., Vale, V. T., & Faria, S. (2022). Slow Fashion Consumer Behaviour: A Literature Review. Sustainability (Basel, Switzerland), 14(5), 2860
