The Changing Perspectives of the Fashion Industry in the Wake of Anthropocene

From time immemorial, ‘Fashion’ has played an integral part in people’s lives. Fashion has been a passive witness to the changes in cultures, beliefs, mind-sets, and preferences of people as bodies moved through space and time. Most of the time, we often relate Fashion to its aesthetic value. The negative aspects of this business, which have been distinguished by glaring disparities, human exploitation and overuse of natural resources and their detrimental effects on society, the physical and cultural environment at large, are still not fully acknowledged. Fashion is the second most polluting industry in the world. In addition to creating artificial demands for apparel, fast fashion has impacted the environment negatively in multiple ways. We are now in an era where the planet has been altered man-made changes, commonly known as the ‘Anthropocene,’ as a result of our activities, where the environment will soon be at a point of no return, with no natural resources, fresh air to breathe, or clean soil left for future generations. Biodiversity loss, limited resources, and climate change will have a boomerang effect that will ripple across all industries, including the fashion industry and the world at large. This chapter focuses on several topics related to sustainable fashion ranging from the concepts of sustainability, sustainable development, the need to shift from linear models of operations to circular models in the fashion industry, the significance of Traceability and its tools and the eminent need of incorporating sustainable practices into all stages of the manufacturing process. It also emphasizes on the recent concerns in the fashion business, such as Green-washing and Green-hushing, Fashion Colonialism and the barriers they create to the growth of sustainable fashion in general. In addition, it discusses the responsibility of fashion professionals to embrace the culture of ‘Fashion Activism,’ in which they contribute to developing a more informed set of fashion customers and transform the narrative of the ‘Fashion Industry’ from negative to positive. It further includes a brief discussion on positive shifts in sustainable fashion such as stronger legislation, thrift stores, and rental markets, up-cycling and recycling, de-influencing, zero-waste fashion and the growth of sustainable fashion education, alternative textiles and Artificial Intelligence. An attempt has been made to organize the fragmented literature available on the topic across various platforms through this chapter. In addition, it leaves scope for further discussions and discourse on the topic. This chapter relies on the secondary method of data collection.