Consume Less, Buy me.

In my recent quest to learn more about sustainable fabrics I have had one nagging thought that keeps creeping back to gnaw away at my do-good intentions: it seems like perhaps the most sustainable, ethical way to buy clothing is to just not buy so damn much of it. Buy a few, high-quality, versatile things that you love, and stop over-consuming. “Buy less” doesn’t exactly seem like the best business strategy for a budding clothing designer, but it does seem practical. Is the command that people be satisfied with less an unavoidably anti-fashion edict?
This issue reminds me of an article from the New Yorker’s financial page about piracy and fashion:

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2007/09/24/070924ta_talk_surowiecki

The gist of the article is that fashion actually thrives because of the high rate of piracy. This is how it works: Once a new trend emerges on the runway, thousands of copycat versions come out within weeks, and this ensures that the fashion-savvy public becomes sated and bored by the trend as quickly as possible. And this quick-acting ennui fuels the desire for something new. A design that looks fresh is only exciting in the context of its opposition that that which is tired-looking; high fashion’s value is constantly in relation to its quickly approaching expiration date. The article also points out that fashion is one of the few industries where consumers are still willing to pay much more for authenticity. The thing that strikes me as important here is the pervasive atmosphere of overconsumption as a precondition for the production of value in the clothing industry.

So, how do I go about justifying the value of my own products? I do ask my customers to pay more than they would at the Gap, but it isn’t high fashion “brand loyalty” that I’m looking for. I believe that people should be willing to pay more for responsibly made, thoughtfully designed garments. We tend to produce things so far from ourselves that we forget or erase the means of production in order to consume at the rate that we do. Producing clothing by hand is slow, it is labor intensive, and more prone to variation in the results. But, there can be a deep satisfaction in this intimate production model. As Michael Pollan points out in his writings on the food industry, we can begin to counteract the industrial model with more locally-based alternatives and there is greater pleasure in knowing than in forgetting. It seems logical that people who value handmade products should also be concerned with where the materials come from, and that cost should be secondary to these concerns, or further, that value should be based in them.

In the handmade economy, authenticity and sustainable production are definite selling points. But handmade products are not immune to the ironies inherent in trying to promote environmentally responsible spending in a capitalist system. It is somewhat paradoxical to use sustainability as a marketing tool. At the heart of any real attempt at sustainability ought to be the sincere effort to buy less. On some level, marketing a product as “sustainable” screams “consume less!” and “buy me!” simultaneously. The obvious way to get around this hypocritical standpoint is to point out that people will continue to buy things whether we like it or not, and that more sustainable products are a step towards lessening that impact. But it doesn’t exactly demand that we alter our over-consumptive outlook. I think it is important to consider the extent to which the imperatives of fashion and those of sustainability are compatible, and what underlying attitudes need to be altered to bring the two closer together.