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The Dangers of Fashion: Towards Ethical and Sustainable Solutions

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The Dangers of Fashion: Towards Ethical and Sustainable Solutions

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From sweatshops to fur farming, from polluting chemicals to painful garments, the fashion industry is associated with activities which have had devastating effects on workers, consumers, and the natural world. This ground-breaking volume provides a framework for examining the ethical, social, and environmental dangers that arise as fashion products are designed, manufactured, distributed, and sold within retail outlets, before being consumed and disposed of. Encompassing the cultural, psychological, and physiological aspects of fashion, it offers a comprehensive exploration of the hazards of a global industry.

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From sweatshops to fur farming, from polluting chemicals to painful garments, the fashion industry is associated with activities which have had devastating effects on workers, consumers, and the natural world. This ground-breaking volume provides a framework for examining the ethical, social, and environmental dangers that arise as fashion products are designed, manufactured, distributed, and sold within retail outlets, before being consumed and disposed of. Encompassing the cultural, psychological, and physiological aspects of fashion, it offers a comprehensive exploration of the hazards of a global industry. Drawing together an international team of leading textile and apparel experts, The Dangers of Fashion presents original perspectives on a wide range of topics from piracy and counterfeiting to human trafficking; from the effects of globalization on local industry to the peer pressure that governs contemporary ideals of beauty. Rooted in research into industry and consumer practices, it discusses innovative solutions—both potential and existing—to fashion’s dangers and moral dilemmas from the viewpoint of individuals, companies, societies, and the global community.

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MMU Library

All Saints

Ground floor: west wing - 2 week loan

391 LEN

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absurd, wearable art artist

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Catwalk - Bruce Asbestos x Juliana Sissons

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view the whole website to get a feel for the artwork :)

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Artist, Bruce Asbestos’ A/W Collection Pre-Season Sweatshirts First Edition Now On Sale

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Vogue - Repairing your clothes can be revolutionary

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Vogue - Repairing your clothes can be revolutionary

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From knitting to crocheting, the coronavirus has seen many of us getting crafty while stuck at home - just look at the popularity of Harry Styles' patchwork cardigan, which became a TikTok sensation when fans began recreating the JW Anderson knit (the designer later released the pattern in tribute to the response). On the catwalk, we've also seen the return of the 'make-do-and-mend' spirit, whether that's upcycled coats at Marni or Maison Margiela's Recicla designs, refashioned from hand-picked vintage pieces.

Orsola de Castro, co-founder of Fashion Revolution and author of Loved Clothes Last: How The Joy Of Rewearing And Repairing Your Clothes Can Be A Revolutionary Act (Penguin, 2021), hopes this new mood means we'll all start taking time to repair the clothes we already have in our wardrobes, too. "There is a poetry in mending that we've forgotten after 30 years of hyper-availability, " she tells Vogue over the phone from her south London home. "It's about slowing down the system."

Practically speaking, mending your clothes - instead of Marie Kondo-ing them when the hem of a skirt comes undone or a small hole appears in your sweater - means you're also preventing them from ending up in landfill (less than one per cent of textiles is currently recycled into new clothing, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation). You're also reducing your environmental impact, with a report from waste charity WRAP finding that extending a garment's life by just nine months can reduce its carbon, waste and water footprints by between 20 to 30 per cent.

Beyond that, taking time to repair our clothes is also about learning to value and fall in love with them again. "For me, my clothes are like photograph albums - each repair reminds me of a story," de Castro says. "The relentless speed [at which we consume clothes] has eradicated the concept of human hands making products. It's about reinstating this culture of understanding our clothes, how to care for them and how to keep them."

Visible mending - whether that's sewing patches on to your jeans or darning holes in your jumper using different colours (see textile artist Celia Pym) - can be an important political statement, particularly at a time when the struggles of the garment workers who make our clothes have been exacerbated by Covid-19. De Castro says it's arguably even more important to repair garments from fast-fashion brands than luxury items so we can fix the current system of "mindless excess".

"Repairing our clothes is a very strong message to be sending these brands: we don't want more, we want better - both better quality of clothes and better for the lives of the people making the clothes," she explains. "If we paid our workers a dignified wage and asked them to produce fewer products, that would be a step in the right direction."

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Repairing Your Clothes Can Be A Revolutionary Act

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Vogue speaks to Orsola De Castro, author of 'Loved Clothes Last: How The Joy Of Rewearing And Repairing Your Clothes Can Be A Revolutionary Act', about how to fix clothes without sacrificing style.

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Remaking history: in hand-making 400-year-old corset designs, I was able to really understand how they impacted women

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While men wrote about women “deforming” their bodies in corsets, there is very little writing from women themselves about what the experience was like.

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A sea of oversized hair bows bobs through primary school gates each morning. It might be dismissed as a harmless children's fad but big bows are back, driven by current fashions, tween influencers and celebrities.

Hair bows have a long history that includes the cushiony large posh bows of the 1980s, and more recently Lady Gaga's hair bow made of hair. In the 1940s, teenage girls wore hair bows as signs of sexual availability.

Over the last century or so they've signified femininity, but historical sources indicate it wasn't always that way.

For the boys

The hair bow was originally gender-specific to adult males in Europe throughout the 1700s when men adorned their hair with bows to show they were prosperous and extravagant.

Women also wore extravagant hairstyles, but these did not often feature hair bows; rather large ornaments and jewels were preferred.

After the French Revolution extravagance in dress and hairstyle was frowned upon and hair bows were rarely worn. By the 1800s it became common for male children to wear hair bows tying hair at the nape of the neck.

Women throughout the 19th century wore hair ornaments and hats, but the hair bow only really achieved widespread popularity in the 20th century before the second world war.

Pretty but strong

The hair bow today most commonly projects ideas of innocence linked to children and a concept of femininity as linked to qualities of gentleness, softness and compliance.

It may be precisely because the hair bow projects such ideals that it has also been employed as a means of empowerment for both female and male bodies.

During the war in 1942 the wartime propaganda We Can Do It poster - designed by Miller for Westinghouse Electric - appeared in the company factories to encourage women at work in the facilities.

The poster depicts an active female holding up her arm to show strength. She wears a red and white spotted scarf in her hair knotted at the top. The female body is presented as strong and able. The bow is minimal in size, and in this context also becomes functional - to keep the woman's hair off her face - rather than simply decorative.

In the 1980s, singers Madonna and Boy George wore bows as symbols of feminine performance. Both pop icons wore the bow as a sign of celebration and transgression. The small fashion moment subtly exposed the social limitations of ideas of femininity.

Madonna wore the hair bow in a subversive manner, poking fun at social constraints projected onto the female body by being girlish and powerfully sexy at the same time.

The innocence of the girly bow, lollipops, white wedding dresses and religious iconography both in her name and the crucifixes she wore contrasted with the sexy and outgoing image she personally projected. Like the titles of her songs and albums - Material Girl, Immaculate Collection, Like a Virgin - the bow poked fun at how women are constrained by the stereotypes of innocence, virginity and femininity.

Meanwhile, Boy George, identifying as male, wore a hair bow during this period to perform femininity. In doing so, he highlighted the hair bow as something socially considered as limited to feminine presentation, but not necessarily limited to a female body.

Gaming gender

Today the hair bow is so intrinsically linked exclusively to femininity performed by a female body that we often see characters in games gendered simply by a hair bow.

In 1981, Ms Pac-Man was released in game form with a hair bow to distinguish her from the original male game protagonist.

Wendy O. Koopa of Super Mario fame relies mainly on a big pink polka dot hair bow (even though she has no hair), but gender is also indicated with a beaded necklace, large lips and long eyelashes. Super Mario character Birdo wears a large pink hair bow tied onto her head (like Wendy, the pink dinosaur does not have hair) and has been hailed as the first transgender game character to hit screens.

Nintendo game character Marmar is probably the most explicit use of the bow to indicate gender. She is a gold star with no other indicators except a big pink hair bow a third of the size of her body. We are familiar with bows as a way of marking femininity through characters such as Ub Iwerks and Walk Disney's Minnie Mouse who debuted in 1928.

JoJo with the bow bow

Most recently American child pop star JoJo Siwa's iconic oversized bow has been the point of great fan connection with many children under 11 years old wearing the oversized and often glamorous bows in public.

Siwa, originally known for her role in reality-TV series Dance Moms (2014), connects with her fans through YouTube and a number of songs with dance videos such as Kid in the Candy Store (2016) and Hold the Drama (2014).

Her Facebook account has more than 6.2 million followers made up of mothers and fans from Australia, UK, US and New Zealand. There are many images of children wearing the bow and often they are pictured with their mothers, suggesting a bond of mother-daughter through femininity.

The JoJo bows are reminiscent of the white Soviet Union bantiki bows, worn from the 1940s on to show national allegiance.

At first glance, JoJo's large bows might be dismissed as dance costume, dress-ups or linked to cheerleading. The practice of wearing them is evident in new Netflix documentary Cheer, which features college athletes competing in body-punishing routines in an effort to win the national championship. Despite being thrown high in the air and landing heavily, their stiff bows remain unmoved.

JoJo asserts the hair bow is more than a look. In an interview with the Children's British Broadcasting Corporation, JoJo said:

A bow is more than just a hair accessory [...] It is a sign, a symbol of power, confidence, and (this is not a word, but) believing-ness, like literally, it's just a good thing.

The hair bow is more than a piece of ribbon. The bow for Siwa and her fans carries power, confidence, "believe-ingness" and goodness.

Luxe for ladies

Bows have come back into fashion in the last few years: worn by the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton, and well-heeled celebrities like Nicole Kidman, Jessica Chastain and Margot Robbie.

The symbolism has been extended to high-end consumerism, with some bow-wearers repurposing the characteristic decorations on Chanel, Dior and Chloe shopping bags for their hair.

Though we've seen many man buns, the trend of hair bows for men has yet to return, and it may be some time before the bow transitions from necktie to men's heads. If it does have a resurgence, we'll know it's nothing new.

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Friday essay: scarlet ribbons - the huge history of big hair bows

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Long before Netflix's Cheer documentary and JoJo Siwa, big huge hair bows were a thing. And it wasn't always girls who wore them.

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Freudian Analysis of Late Victorian Clothing

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Freudian Analysis of Late Victorian Clothing