Is a sustainable fashion future a women's burden?
thoughts on the question everyone's talking about recently
Despite working in the online sustainable fashion community every day, I can only name one or two male sustainable fashion influencers. The long list of names who come to mind are mostly women - Aja Barber, Orsolo de Castro, Venetia Le Manna - I could go on and on, but you get the point.
The trend continues when it comes to start-ups pushing for a circular economy. Female founders Victoria Hurr (Hurr), Josephine Philips (SOJO), Bianca Rangecroft (Whering) and Shannon Welch (Renewcell) are behind some of the most recognisable brands driving change in the industry.
The images that appear when I search “sustainable fashion” into Google are all women wearing floaty dresses, posing amongst nature, or piles of decidedly feminine-looking clothes heaped on the floor. (and some vaguely eco-looking graphics, but let’s ignore those). My own image of a sustainable fashion industry is female-centred; I picture past events I’ve been to where gender disparity is almost non-existent, I picture women swapping clothes with their friends, I picture fast-fashion hauls posted by young girls on TikTok.
Although our mental images may vary, I think this holds some truth for all of us in the industry. Subconsciously or not, sustainable fashion has always been treated as a woman’s job. Maybe it’s because sustainability is always linked so closely to homemaking, or maybe it’s because fashion has always been treated as a frivolous indulgence for women - despite holding importance culturally, socially and economically.
Vogue Business recently ran a story entitled, ‘Why are sustainability-focused designers mostly women?’, citing Stella McCartney, Gabriela Hearst and Aurora James as stand-out names. Vogue’s answer is simple “[Women] often find themselves leading in times of crisis, expected to navigate tumultuous waters and pioneer innovative solutions,” Whether this is true or not - if that’s the expectation, then why aren’t more women in a position of power for our ongoing climate crisis?
[An even better question: where would fashion be today if more women were in positions of power? Would we have reached more climate goals? Already have a solution in place for fashion’s polyester problem? We can only guess.]
Fashion’s C-suites are overwhelmingly male-dominated - of the top 30 luxury brands in the Vogue Business Index 2023, eight of the 33 creative director roles were currently held by women. The same trend runs through to the other end of the industry: Shein, Zara, Boohoo, H&M, Missguided, ASOS - the only major fast fashion player to not have a male CEO is Temu. I’m not saying there’s a direct correlation, but there’s certainly a pattern here.
I’ll give another example. My last newsletter spoke about fashion’s disappointing sustainability progress in Remake’s report. If you remember, Everlane was the brand to score the highest, at which CEO Andrea O'Donnell has sat at the top since 2022. LVMH, which I highlighted as having disappointing results for the company’s power and financial backing, is helmed by Bernard Arnault. Why is it that O’Donnell can lead the pack on sustainable progress whilst the world’s richest man can lag behind and face little to no scrutiny?
[Perhaps because they’ve learned they can so easily divert our attention to fast fashion brands to distract from their own misdeeds?]
Fashion itself has a mostly female-dominated workforce. Garment workers in the Global South are overwhelmingly female POC - an even more underrepresented demographic in fashion’s boardrooms. It’s estimated that 80 per cent of textile workers are women, and many have labelled fast fashion as not just an environmental issue, but a feminist one too.
Even the reporting of fashion’s sustainability issues is unbalanced; Megan Doyle, Alden Wicker, Sarah Kent, Clare Press, and Jasmin Malik Chua are some of the biggest names diligently covering sustainability progress. A notable exception is Alec Leach, but he’s also aware of how the female-dominated sustainability industry “feels like an echo chamber”, and is severely limited in its reach: “Even though overconsumption is not gendered, it always feels like the people targeted or addressed to are mostly women.”
There’s a lot of truth in that statement. We’re well aware of how trend-led culture is directly related to overconsumption, and females are primarily blamed for their fast fashion habits. But why does the same energy not extend to sneaker culture or streetwear hype, both male-dominated spaces and not without considerable consumption? A man may be labelled a “sneakerhead” if he owns hundreds of pairs of trainers, but a woman has a “shopping addiction” if she has one too many pairs of heels - as always, the language we use is important. The same is true for ultra-fast fashion: although the rise of fast-fashion giant Shein is largely blamed on girly TikTok hauls, it was the second most popular brand for Gen Z males last year.
Whilst the menswear market has been quietly and steadily growing these past few years, the buying power of women still dwarfs men in comparison. Figures from 2021 suggest women made at least almost twice as many purchases as men - a trend that hasn’t fluctuated throughout the years. At the same time, men are reportedly more likely to spend more on fashion than women - so why is the majority of fashion’s marketing budget targeted at female-presenting consumers? Why does it feel like we’re always being marketed to with the next thing that will fix this issue or help us fit in more, whilst also being blamed for continually shopping? Sure, we all have autonomy over our spending power and can choose to ignore advertising - but there’s definitely more pressure put on us to buy.
Fashion’s efforts towards a circular economy also feel gender-biased: few rental platforms offer menswear beyond suits or bags, for example. Despite many apps pushing for rental fashion to become adopted outside of formalwear, they haven’t extended this attitude to their male fashion offerings, leaving little option for men other than buying something. Repair, too, has always been treated as a woman’s job. The role of mending clothes or darning socks always fell to the wife, and despite how far feminism has come society has still not felt the need to educate men on repairing their own clothes.
Not only is the burden of sustainability being unfairly placed on female consumers, but it’s also leaving men out of the conversation - they’re often not held to account for their shopping habits, so they don’t take any responsibility for their part in the climate crisis.
Although the issue does have many complexities, there’s a few things we can sum up: women simultaneously carry the responsibility and blame of fashion’s environmental impact, but lack the leadership roles or authority to actually bring about change. Female founders who try to go alone face a gender disparity in investment opportunities. We spend more, but we’re not alone in buying fast fashion or being wasteful with our shopping habits. It’s infuriating and exasperating, progress seems almost non-existent, and time is against us - but we’ll never give up trying.
Until next time!
Katie
Here’s what I did this month:
made lots of YouTube videos:
Some much-needed good news first:
Secondhand clothing on track to take 10% of global fashion sales
Fashion rental platform By Rotation adds new 'local' feature
India Lifts Shein Ban And Becomes Fashion’s Best Hope For Circularity
Fucking THANK YOU at 'But why does the same energy not extend to sneaker culture or streetwear hype, both male-dominated spaces and not without considerable consumption?' I feel like I've been going crazy but I'll admit I'm a tad biased and super tired of streetwear's hype culture gone mainstream.