Ethical Fashion


Worldwide, 100 billion garments are produced annually, of which 33% are discarded in the same year they were produced. The full production cycle of one white cotton T-shirt requires 2,700 liters of water, the amount that a person drinks in three years. The clothes we throw away come back to us in the form of microplastics, as more than half of them are made of polyester. Discarded clothing causes more environmental problems than plastic bottles, many of which are recyclable. 5-6 collections a year, as the established practice of design houses, quite causes satiety and a certain cult of “clothes for the sake of clothes”, sometimes absurd in the use of seemingly ordinary things like an imposed means of “self-expression”. Inertia in the cult of consumption is supported in every possible way, including through the use of the environmental friendliness trend as a marketing ploy. There is a need to create new durable clothing with new functional qualities, using materials that meet the requirements of sustainable clothing. The list and number of necessary things used by an individual will be less, but each of them will fulfill its functional purpose, meet high consumer requirements, and this will be a real embodiment of the concept of “favorite clothes”. This approach to clothing is one of the elements of the concept of secular asceticism. In this case, it is impossible to regard clothing as an unimportant factor, it is the daily need of a huge number of people, to satisfy which a new production and financial system based on renewable energy with the use of digital technologies is required. The scale and, at the same time, compliance with the new required qualities of sustainable clothing does not allow us to consider some kind of point approach, like individual startups producing eco-friendly T-shirts or underwear. The solution will be the phased creation of an entire system for the production of sustainable clothing and it is required to set in motion a huge wheel, attracting more and more people who share a new approach to their life based on secular asceticism as the basis for reducing their harmful effects on the environment, the widespread use of renewable energy and digital technologies.