Fletcher wants us to start thinking more about how we use clothes: how we live with them, wear them, share them, pass them on, mend or alter them, exist with and relate to them. That, she says, has nothing to do with commerce.
Fletcher is one of the co-founders of the newly formed Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion. Asked if it’s an anti-capitalist organisation, she says no, “but we’re against a certain sort of uncritical approach to all of this. A lot of people see the current ways [they] go about engaging with fashion as values-neutral. None of it is, because it’s explicitly propping up the status quo.”
She hopes that more of us will begin to consider planetary boundaries. By 2050 there could be 10 billion humans on Earth. It’s time we called time on mindlessly guzzling resources, and stopped throwing stuff ‘away’ after single, or just a few, uses. (*Hello! There is no away. Just a reminder!)
The days of merrily ignoring the consequences for Nature are over. And if that means reimagining fashion with a focus on its use over its acquisition, all well and good.
Read more about the Union of Concerned Fashion Researchers.
Discover Kate’s new book, Wild Dress – Clothing and the Natural World, in our Eco-Age Reads Book Club.
Discover more Wardrobe Crisis podcast episodes including Livia Firth’s interview here.
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