Sustainability Transformation in the Fashion System: The Role of Epistemic Communities

As climate change has been recognized as our most pressing and urgent problem, fashion sustainability is moving toward new framings and discourses: various corporate actors are now successfully marketing themselves as part of the solution instead of being cast as part of the problem. The focal point of this chapter is the epistemic communities that are forming around powerful groups of professionals with corporate underpinnings. The influence of these communities on policy and industry developments are shaping the fashion sector’s response to climate change. Drawing from the theoretical background of the epistemic communities’ framework in connection with literature on promotional cultures as a social and political force, this chapter argues that fashion sustainability research needs to pay more attention to the emergence, development, and character of the most powerful epistemic communities within the fashion sector. It is also critical that we further investigate how these networks enable and constrain the actions to promote a more sustainable and just fashion industry, the ways in which they represent the global structures of the fashion system, and the historical context from which they are emerging.