This book provides a critical insight into sustainability and fashion in a retailing and marketing context. Examining a truly global industry, Sustainability in Fashion offers international application with a view to contextualising important developments within the industry. Contributors use their diverse backgrounds and expertise to provide a contemporary approach in examining key theoretical concepts, constructs and developments. Topics include consumer behaviour, communications, circular economy and supply chain management. The individual chapters focus on sustainability and provide a range of fashion sector examples from high street to luxury apparel.

This book examines how sustainability has the potential to transform both the fashion system and the innovators who work within it. Sustainability is arguably the defining theme of the twenty-first century. The issues in fashion are broad-ranging and include labour abuses, toxic chemicals use and conspicuous consumption, giving rise to an undeniable tension between fashion and sustainability. The book is organized in three parts. The first part is concerned with transforming fashion products across the garment's lifecycle and includes innovation in materials, manufacture, distribution, use and re-use. The second part looks at ideas that are transforming the fashion system at root into something more sustainable, including new business models that reduce material throughput. The third section is concerned with transforming the role of fashion designers and looks to examples where the designer changes from a stylist or creator into a communicator, activist or facilitator.

This is the first book to introduce and explain the concept of sustainable consumption with reference to the clothing sector. It uses various case studies to detail sustainable consumption behavior in the industry. Consumption is a key issue and is a major driver when it comes to sustainability in any industry, including clothing sector. Several studies which have highlighted the need for sustainable consumption in the clothing sector are discussed in this book.

There is no doubt that the textile industry – the production of clothing, fabrics, thread, fibre and related products – plays a significant part in the global economy. It also frequently operates with disregard to its environmental and social impacts. The textile industry uses large quantities of water and outputs large quantities of waste. As for social aspects, many unskilled jobs have disappeared in regions that rely heavily on these industries. Another serious and still unresolved problem is the flexibility textile industry companies claim to need. Faced with fierce international competition, they are increasingly unable to offer job security. This is without even considering the informal-sector work proliferating both in developing and developed countries. Child labour persists within this sector despite growing pressure to halt it.Fashion demands continuous consumption. In seeking to own the latest trends consumers quickly come to regard their existing garments as inferior, if not useless. "Old" items become unwanted as quickly as new ones come into demand. This tendency towards disposability results in the increased use of resources and thus the accelerated accumulation of waste. It is obvious to many that current fashion industry practices are in direct competition with sustainability objectives; yet this is frequently overlooked as a pressing concern.It is, however, becoming apparent that there are social and ecological consequences to the current operation of the fashion industry: sustainability in the sector has been gaining attention in recent years from those who believe that it should be held accountable for the pressure it places on the individual, as well as its contribution to increases in consumption and waste disposal.This book takes a wide-screen approach to the topic, covering, among other issues: sustainability and business management in textile and fashion companies; value chain management; use of materials; sustainable production processes; fashion, needs and consumption; disposal; and innovation and design.The book will be essential reading for researchers and practitioners in the global fashion business.

A definitive guide to the complex issues surrounding modern clothing production, use, and disposal

The clothing industry employs 25 million people globally contributing to many livelihoods and the prosperity of communities, to women’s independence, and the establishment of significant infrastructures in poorer countries. Yet the fashion industry is also a significant contributor to the degradation of natural systems, with the associated environmental footprint of clothing high in comparison with other products. Routledge Handbook of Sustainability and Fashion recognizes the complexity of aligning fashion with sustainability. It explores fashion and sustainability at the levels of products, processes, and paradigms and takes a truly multi-disciplinary approach to critically question and suggest creative responses to issues of: • Fashion in a post-growth society • Fashion, diversity and equity • Fashion, fluidity and balance across natural, social and economic systems This handbook is a unique resource for a wide range of scholars and students in the social sciences, arts and humanities interested in sustainability and fashion.