Fashion should be sustainable. That’s clear. However, people’s understanding of what is meant by sustainable varies. There are those who associate sustainability with being environmentally friendly. Others link it to human rights and justice. There are also those who combine both.
These views are not wrong, because they are both based on the spirit of realizing an industrial model that can meet the needs of the current generation, without ignoring the needs and future of future generations (Brundtland in Miguel Angel Gardetti and Ana Laura Torres, Sustainability in Fashion and Textiles: Values, Design, Production and Consumption, 2013, p. 3). Creating an industrial climate that maintains a balance between business interests, creativity, the environment and human values.
The issue of sustainability in fashion began to be discussed by people at least in the 1990s. Triggered by many reports about the poor badak togel living conditions of textile and garment factory workers in countries providing cheap labor such as Indonesia, China and India. It concerns issues of living wages, health insurance, working hours and legal protection. Another trigger is the problem of pollution and textile factory waste which damages the environment. These two issues have encouraged the birth of various movements with a sustainable spirit. Sustainable development, sustainable agriculture, green movement, including sustainability in the fashion industry.
In the fashion industry, the parties that are the target of criticism are fast-fashion brands, such as GAP, Zara, Mango, H&M, and Forever 21. The term fast-fashion itself refers to a collection of cheap clothes whose designs imitate luxury fashion trends (Annamma Joy, John F. Sherry, Jr, Alladi Venkatesh, Jeff Wang and Ricky Chan, Fast Fashion, Sustainability, and the Ethical Appeal of Luxury Brands, Fashion Theory, 2012, Volume 16, Issue 3, p. 273).
Many findings show that fast-fashion brands treat their workers inhumanely. Among other things, we can see it in John Pilger’s documentary, The New Rulers of the World; Lucy Siegle’s books, To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing Out The World, and We Are What We Wear: Unraveling Fast Fashion and the Collapse of Rana Plaza; Tansy E. Hoskins, Stitched Up: The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion, and Foot Work: What Your Shoes Are Doing to the World; as well as the documentary The True Cost.