Active Lifestyle - Fashion Revolution

The fashion industry is ever changing, in today’s culture fashion design moves faster then ever before as globalisation has made fast fashion accessible to the mass market. But what is the social and environmental impact of this, does there need to be a fashion revolution?

Transparency Trend
Maybe designers need to become more transparent in their supply chain and consider environmental issues to make sure we have a future?!
Since the growth of globalisation, the fashion industry supply chain has expanded and operations have become increasingly international. Modern technology has provided the opportunity for fashion businesses to spread their resources far and wide, in a connected global economy. Globalisation has brought many advantages to business growth, such as wider choice, access to resources in the mass markets and competitive prices. However, there are also disadvantages that need to be addressed as business grow and spread internationally.
As fashion businesses grow globally, there is a demand for more transparency. Transparency in the supply chain has become a current trend in the fashion industry, questioning where clothes are being made. Consumers are becoming more conscious about how their clothes are made.  As Fast Fashion is primarily being produced internationally at low costs, this has become increasingly popular with consumers, partly due to the recent British recession in the economy making cheaper products more appealing (Mintel, 2010).

However, In 2013 a garment factory in Bangladesh collapsed, killing more than a thousand people, and putting fast fashion under the microscope. An increasing amount of consumers are now seeking knowledge about where and how their garments are being made, resulting in transparency in the supply chain. Brand values need to be represented beyond the image into the supply chain so how can this be applied? Kevin O’Marah from SCM World suggests that preserving heritage brand values can be the key to vertical integration and a transparent supply chain.
Brands need to consider their values and developing them into the supply chain with an innovative approach, to satisfy consumers and government officials. With the “increasing awareness of environmental degradation and the likely increase in the number of extreme weather events, consumers will demand better corporate social and environmental responsibility from manufacturers”. As awareness of the conditions of global manufacturing in developing countries is growing, there is a growing demand seeking sustainable products being made locally to achieve more transparency in the supply chain. Leading to country-of-origin brands’ and manufacturers’ developing closer relations and a ‘value’ workforce, to enable an efficient production of products for a successful transparent supply chain.

So perhaps the future of design is to become more transparent as consumers are developing more awareness, their demands are changing and are questioning where their clothes are being made and ethical fashion is being sourced to consider our future.