Ethical and sustainability awareness have become a fundamental part of everyday life in twenty-first century society, engendering significant changes in consumer behaviour. Katelan Sweeney explores the significance of sustainable design practices and its potential to reposition the fashion industry.
Buying truly sustainable fashion is a huge challenge. The complexity of the fashion industry has made the concept of environmentally and economically sustainable, ethically sound clothing extremely difficult for the industry to address. But fear not, because the Australian Red Cross charity boutique ‘Red Threads’ in Capalaba is a treasure trove of old and new high quality recycled items waiting to be snapped up at second-hand bargain prices.
Red Threads offers something for everyone, from vintage fashion pieces, premium recycled garments and racks of handpicked knits, dresses, one-off jewellery pieces and a surplus of power jackets. When it comes to boutique shopping, Red Threads knows the way to a girl’s purse.
Red Cross is part of the world’s largest humanitarian organisation with 60,000 members and volunteers in Australia providing relief in times of crisis. The donated items sold in Red Threads raise funds to support the everyday work of Red Cross helping vulnerable people in the community.
The Red Cross store, Red Threads aims to change the idea of a typical op-shop that is overstocked with outdated clothes. Providing socially conscious shoppers with garments that are fashionable and affordable, the quaint, shoebox-sixed store is cleverly designed and decorated with fancy looking handiworks on display and neatly colour code fittings.
But the real draw card is the designer threads collection, a capsule range of pieces that sell for a fraction of the retail price. Red Threads store manager Victoria Anderson says everything comes down to visual merchandising and what stands out the most. “Customers will look at the quality and the fabrics,” she says. “We get a lot of unique designer brands, particularly Sydney and Melbourne-based, as well as high-end fashion labels such as Easton Pearson, Collette Dinnigan, Scanlan and Theodore and even American label Vera Wang, which get snatched up straight away.”
Reclaiming old clothes in order to extend the life of a garment appears to be part of the larger trend of sustainable fashion. Red Threads founder and general manager of merchandise Olivia Cozzolino describes the store as “modern recycled” with dulcet tones filtering through the interior. “It’s a world away from the usual charity experience,” she says. “This is what Red Cross stores are about – clothing from a different era in fashion, something that the consumer can purchase which is unique.”
Red Threads is not only encouraging growth and sustainability, but is reducing the resources required to satisfy consumption needs. Allowing clothes to regain their previous value has shifted consumer behaviour towards lower consumption and sustainable fashion design.
Queensland University of Technology Creative Industries associate lecturer Jane Morley says second-hand shops reduce textile waste that goes to landfill and encourages a culture of reusing and recycling. “Second-hand shops reduce the amount of ‘new’ fresh-from-the-factory clothes that consumers are buying and encourage them to be creative by putting their own looks together rather than blindly following trends,” she says. “It also gives consumers the fun social experience of shopping with their friends without buying fast fashion products.”
Second-hand garments that consumers can wear and wash with a fraction of the environmental impact are proving to be part of the larger trend of sustainability. Recycling clothing reduces landfill waste, carbon emissions and large amounts of resources needed to produce new clothing.
Fortitude Valley Red Cross store manager Clare Watson says ethical and sustainable retailing is spreading beyond niche markets to mainstream. “What you find here is recycled clothing from the very start,” she says.
Fashion uses more water than any other industry and is accountable for more than 8, 000 chemicals turned into raw materials causing irreversible damage to people and the environment. Using resources in a way that does not impoverish the planet for the next generation is proving to be one of the biggest challenges yet.
Reclaiming old clothes in order to extend the life of a garment avoids contribution to toxic landfills. While this comes down to the important role for the designer in making and influencing choices, we as consumers have the responsibility of making a difference through purchasing.
Red Cross retail manager Jo Bettiens says people are becoming much more aware of the benefits of reducing, reusing and recycling. “People feel good when they shop with us knowing that their purchase has been saved from landfill and that the garment has been given a new life,” she says.
Both the trend and fashion of being environmentally conscious has encouraged a significant change in consumer behaviour towards lower consumption and sustainably designed fashion. “We’re committed to making sustainability a trend that’s here to stay,” Cozzolino says. “The discussions on the role of vintage and second-hand garments balance the strong focus on industry practices.”
Sustainable fashion practice also engages new approaches to the design process and its potential to reposition the fashion industry. There is an urgent need to reconcile ethical, environmental and social agendas through future product development in the fashion industry with an increasingly important role for the designer in making and influencing choices. “When we buy fast fashion, it’s not the real cost of the garment in terms of the cost to the environment and the people involved in the production of the cloth and clothing,” Morley says.
Balancing the fashion desires of the individual with the need to be steward to the environment is a complex issue that involves changing the way we think, work and live. Sustainability is not a passing trend, and is here to stay playing an essential role to our physical, social and economic well-being.
Photography – Andre Cois
Styling – Marie Tolland
Hair & Make-up – Curtly Barnes
Model – Ashleigh Hawthorne