In the last two decades, global production of clothing has increased 400% to 80 billion garments per year. The pesticides used in the raw materials, the chemicals used in the manufacturing process, and the dumping of toxic wastewater back into the environment has made Fashion the second largest polluter in the world – after oil.
Where we once had 4 seasons per year, fast fashion retailers now pump out 24 seasons per year – one collection every two weeks, ensuring that there is always new merchandise arriving at their stores. The result is a new generation of Millennial consumers that now expect to see something new every time they walk into a store. These fast fashion pieces, sewn so quickly that the buttons are the first to go, are of such poor quality that they can only be worn for a couple months regularly without falling apart (site source, girl challenge). There is always a newer, better, and more on-trend piece to be bought – or so the windows and advertising would have you believe. New styles replace the old ones, if they even get worn at all. In fact, 30% of what’s in an American closet is not even worn (site source), and rather than mend a hole or sew back a button, the clothes are so inexpensive that it is cheaper to just buy a new piece of clothing rather than send it to a tailor.
While all products have increased in price due to inflation over the last 20 years (site source), clothing has actually gone down in price – that is, clothing has actually become cheaper. Much of this price drop is attributed to moving production overseas, first with China and now with Bangladesh. There is a human cost to making cheap clothing, of course, and there are many questionable labor practices at clothing manufacturers garment workers often earn less than a living wage in their home country.
But there is also a serious environmental cost with the rise of cheaper plastic-based fabrics like polyester and acrylic in China. Polyester, a cheap synthetic fiber made from petrochemicals, require high temperatures powered by fossil fuels and 4x more energy than natural fibers to produce, and recently (2014?) surpassed cotton as the leading fiber for clothing globally (site source). Since they are a plastic themselves, they are not biodegradable and cannot be recycled if they are blended with other fibers (which is, most of the time). So they are thrown out and contribute to the 13 million tons of clothing in landfill every year. (site source)
Even during its life of being worn, the broken-up plastic fibers exit through the washing machine wastewater, and end up in water sources where they harm fish and wildlife. (Site source)
But what may seem most surprising is that most of us do not realize how these synthetic fibers, dyes and finishes are affecting our own health. Natural fibers like flax, wool, cotton, linen, and silk have been worn by humans as far back as 6500 year ago, so it should not be surprise to anyone that are better for your health than manmade fibers like polyester and nylon that have only been around for the last 100 years. While natural dyes have been used and perfected over thousands of years (if we are to follow Chinese traditional medicine’s history of 5000 years), it seems questionable why we’ve suddenly placed our trust in chemical dyes that have only existed for only 150 years. These man-made alternatives were invented because they were cheaper, without enough consideration for long-term health and environmental consequences.
Studies have shown that synthetic fibers do not allow the skin to breathe properly, making us sweat when it’s hot out, or not insulate when it’s cold (site source). The cancer-causing chemicals used to dye the fabric can actually enter through our skin, the body’s largest organ, and enter our bloodstream and get stored in our fat cells.(site source). We’ve become aware of the plastics in our food and the chemicals in our shampoo, but what about the clothes we wear all day on our body?
We look sympathetically at dead ocean wildlife that are cut-open to reveal plastic pieces they’ve ingested thinking that they were food. And yet, here we are as human doing the same thing, wearing these chemical dyes in various colors, perhaps because instinctually our bodies had once aligned the natural plant color versions with healing properties on our skin, without realizing that the synthetic chemical version is now harming our bodies. After all, scientists have observed that epigenetic memories are passed down for 14 generations, and that the experiences of our ancestors is programmed into our own DNA.
Since the Rena Plaza collapse, we have put a lot of emphasis on the human labor behind our clothes. But do we really know where the raw materials for our clothes come from? Who is growing the cotton used for our t-shirts? How is polyester made for our yoga pants? What are the chemicals and processes used to dye it and make it feel soft?
I was initially ticked off to the chemicals in our fabrics when I was a Design Assistant at Donna Karan Collection in New York. The local studio that dyed our sample fabrics told me how toxic the dyes were, especially the ones used for synthetic fabrics like polyester and nylon – which she refused to dye. One time, we had some expensive cashmere fabric from Italy in a washing machine on our design floor and the smell of sulfur and rotten eggs spread throughout the entire floor and made everyone feel sick. Yet it didn’t sink in at the time that it was a wider industry problem, or that it was necessary to do anything about it.
As a designer, I was still learning about all the materials and just assumed this is just how things were. I had never learned how conventional fabrics were actually produced. We just ordered them from the fabric mill, based on look and feel and price, and then were shipped to our design studio a few weeks later exactly in the amount and color we had requested. There was no questioning into how or where it was produced and, frankly, it seemed boring and we didn’t care to know. In fact, we designers are often so unaware of the industrial fabric-making process, we wouldn’t even know what questions to ask. Even the trend forecaster Li Edelkoort recently mentioned that designers today are not taught about fabric and materials anymore.(site source, pull quote?)
If it is true that 90% of a product’s environmental impact is determined at the design stage (site Patagonia book source), then we designers have a significant amount of power in shaping the future of a better world around us. We must learn how the fabrics we use are made so that we can make more informed decisions about what we are creating.
Years later, I got red hives all over my body from a bright blue silk dress that I had bought in a touristy shop in Shanghai. Thinking it was the low quality of the fabric, the label did say “Made in China” after all, the same thing happened to me months later with a pair of polyester shorts from the designer Italian brand (Shirt, Shirt – what is the brand name?) It was the same bright blue, and I picked it up at the department store Le Bon Marché in Paris.
So these chemicals are used everywhere, in both cheap fast fashion and expensive designer clothes. And the truth is, we designers really don’t know where our fabrics come from or how they are made. We are just as far removed from the process as someone is buying a bag of potato chips at a grocery store. We place our order from the textile mill —whether in Italy, Japan, or China — and we trust that the fabric is tested and safe to wear by the time we receive it 4-6 weeks later. We don’t know anything about the raw materials or the dyes and finishes being used in them.
It was not until years later, when I was at Lululemon, as Head Designer of their innovation incubator called Lab, that I suddenly had access to a wide range of synthetic fabrics that I was tasked with using exclusively. Natural fiber fabrics were, apparently, too expensive for their lower price point. By wearing the fabrics everyday in various styles, I experienced what it was like to wear plastic-based fabrics every day and the impact these chemical dyes and processes could have on one’s own personal health. It certainly gave me a window into how the majority of Americans wear clothing, especially since more and more people are wearing lower-priced active sportswear everyday to school and work, in addition to working out. It also showed me the barriers and challenges preventing corporate brands from adopting more sustainable fabrics. If I was experiencing these challenges at Lululemon, then I was certain these were happening at other global active sportswear brands.
Today, we in the U.S. are increasingly removing ourselves from nature and the synthetic-fiber clothes we wear are the first barrier of this separation. Since the Enlightenment period, we’ve seen ourselves as humans vs. nature when, in fact, we are actually a part of nature. This disconnect is strongest in cities, artificial man-made environments, where we pretend nature does not exist except as a superficial decorative element like a park or a tree-lined street. Flying from the pristine Guizhou countryside where even the dirt seemed clean and organic, It took a lot of adjusting when flying into Shanghai where the the brown polluted skies were the visual symptom of the man-made chemical-heavy plastic objects decorating the streets.
Think of all the knowledge that was lost with the eradication of Native Americans in the U.S., and how our country would have developed had we followed their wisdom of living harmoniously with the land. While I could not go back to the 17th century when Native Americans roamed across the country, I could at least observe the Chinese ethnic minority elders in their natural habitat. Over 700 years (fact check Dimen village), they had created a world where their activities were integral to the ecosystem and perfected farming techniques that were crucial in maintaining balance with nature. Every conversation I have with a local villager leaves me amazed and surprised by what they teach me.
Of course, I’m a fashion designer and my original intention was not to observe indigenous farmers spending the day pushing water buffalo across terraced rice patties. What I really wanted was my fabric!
But in order to receive it, I had to learn how to wait. And those who have been trained in the New York fashion industry are not accustomed to waiting. The speed of producing is so fast these days that we work in culture where everything was due “yesterday.”
So it took me some time, years even, to wrap my head around this concept of being patient. I had to understand the cycles of nature. Nature could provide all the raw materials I need, but the timing in which it delivers is the complete opposite of how the international fashion industry functions. If I was to receive the fabrics I needed to develop my collection, I would have to forget everything I learned as a fashion designer in New York.
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