Abstract

The current Linear Fashion Economy has presented high wastage percentages throughout the entire production system in the fashion industry. Beyond harming the environment, the loss of market value is evident. Thus, the need for a redesign of the fashion industry has become clear. With this need, the Circular Fashion trend has become more and more present through lucrative new companies, new subbrands, and a promising new industry.

Keywords: circular fashion, waste, fashion industry

Take-Make-Dispose

#Burnberry

Burberry, a luxury British fashion label, was called out for burning $38 million of unsold stock. (Siegle, 2018) The reasoning for the disposal was to avoid getting their products in the wrong hands and then being sold at a discount, devaluing the brand. (BBC, 2018). The story ended up trending on social media under the hashtag #burnberry, calling out the brand for its action.

The practice is common in the luxury industry, even being reported on their own annual report as “finished goods physically destroyed during the year” but not always disclosed as brands have no legal obligation to disclose it. (Siegle, 2018) The idea is to keep luxury brands’ pricing, avoiding selling any products under discount as this would diminish the brands’ prestige. Labels as Chanel and Cartier, strongly believe in the idea of keeping their products scarce in order to make them truly exclusive.

Beyond Luxury

Not only do brands like Burberry, and Chanel get rid of their goods, 73% of garments that are thrown away are either buried in a landfill or buried, and only 1% of it is recycled to become new clothing. (Souchet, 2019) Since 2000, the fashion industry has doubled production while the time of usage on clothing has decreased by 40%, deeply increasing the waste on textile waste.

According to research conducted by MIT in 2015, 150 billion garments are produced yearly, yet each average American disposes of 35kg of them every year (Sánchez, 2016) Yet, waste does not only occur on the endpoint of sale but in the whole production sale.

Introducing Circular Fashion

In order to avoid the waste of textiles, created by the current Linear Fashion Economy where resources are taken from the environment, turned into products that are briefly used and thrown away, a trend has emerged in the fashion industry called The Circular Fashion. This trend created a holistic approach to the design and manufacturing process where it diminishes the usage of natural resources and waste.

By creating a closed-loop system, materials can be reused and recycled. Implementing this model would assess the current fashion industry’s most pressing issues like climate change, pollution, and waste. (The Sustainable Fashion Forum, 2022)