3. Social Activism, The Fast Way to Promoting Slow Fashion
As a digital citizen, one can utilise any platform to spread awareness on a pressing issue. This week’s case study is the slow fashion movement, emphasising sustainable growth and fair work over cheap labour and potentially damaging practices.
“Garments act as a vessel of self-expression and create an identity” (Lai, Henninger & Panayiota, 2017). The quote above allows a direct parallel between social media and fashion. This textile industry allows people to demonstrate personality and emotion through a direct visual source, what you are wearing. This goes from such extremes as a baggy hoodie and tracksuit to a suede suit. The same can be said of social media, as “socially mediated self-expression” (Scolere, Pruchniewska, Duffy, 2018), platforms allowing the user to develop identity and portray this to a large following. Through this, it makes sense that the textile industry and social media are closely linked, allowing individuals to utilise the digital medium for expression of both fashion and self.
Within the current socioeconomic climate, issues surrounding the environment become an ever-pressing matter, the younger generation finding a larger voice through the use of social media. These young people exercise this digital citizenship to advocate for a greater future for the environment, social media facilitating this continuation of the slow fashion trend. This is largely seen through various renting pages on social media that allow the users to rent and return clothes, rather than buy and throw them out. This ensures a sustainable product industry. Additionally, influencers like Venetia La Manna employs her own digital freedom to advocate further progression in this slow fashion movement, recently pointing to fair work conditions as an avenue to stop charity t-shirt making in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. La Manna uses the voice given to her by digital media to get a message to her mass following and continue to improve the world. A link to her article can be found below: (https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/coronavirus-charity-tshirt-stay-home-fast-fashion-garment-workers-pollution-a9482351.html)
