A team of researchers from across the world has launched what it says is radical framework to help move the fashion sector from an unsustainable system based on economic growth and profits to one that puts nature first.
The Earth Logic plan – launched by researchers and professors Kate Fletcher from the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at London College of Fashion, and Mathilda Tham from Linnaeus University in Sweden – comprises three parts. There is a framework to plan and evaluate action, a checklist to keep action research on radical track, and six ‘holistic landscapes’ setting out progressive areas for “putting earth first.”
These ‘holistic landscapes’ offer ways to transform the whole fashion system, including moving industry away from growth and physical accumulation towards care and maintenance, as well as governance and communication.
“For many years we’ve been dressing like we are somehow separate from the Earth,” says Professor Tham. “But our fate is tied to the health of the planet and this means we need to change. We have reached a hugely important moment in history. We can choose a path of development based on Earth Logic or sink using old methods of economic growth logic.”
Professor Fletcher adds: “The Earth Logic Plan is about rooting fashion in creativity, community, curiosity, courage and care. It is about caring so much about saving this planet that we commit to changing fashion. If we are serious about saving our beautiful planet and future generations, we need to be brave and commit to changing fashion. Every action counts, there is no time to waste.”
The starting point of the Earth Logic Plan is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) deadline to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels within a decade, with a call for the fashion sector to recognise that the necessary shift in knowledge and behaviour is dramatic.
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By GlobalDataThis shift requires a reduction in the quantity of resource use of between a 75% and 95% when compared with today’s levels. While 75% is a sharp reduction that would impact our lives substantially, the researchers say 95% is a massive constriction in access to resources.
In the case of the typical British citizen, they explain, 95% is the equivalent to restricting all the possessions someone would ever own to those that fit into a small rowing boat. “This would include everything for sleeping, dressing, washing, cooking, eating, entertainment, the tools of productive employment, the things we need for learning and fun.”
The report notes the “scale and speed of change required means that genuinely systemic efforts are needed. In the fashion context this means addressing not only the environmental impact of a fashion product and the processes of making it, but also the psychology behind fashion use, our systems of economics, finance and trade, how we fashion local and global infrastructures around clothing, how we construct meaningful lives and livelihoods.
“Rethinking fashion outside the economic growth logic shifts power from multinational companies to organisations, communities and citizens. It invites fashion creativity to flourish far beyond the confines of a garment, into visions of new relationships between people, other species, artefacts and technologies.”
Environmental journalist Lucy Siegle adds: “The authors of this report make very clear, for the fashion sector to meet the global deadline set by the IPCC and a resource reduction imperative, we will have to leave behind some logics and systems that may have served some parts of our community well in the past. We must let go of the prevailing growth-logic that dominates our sector and swap it for Earth logic in order to survive. It is that stark.”
