Essay #3 | Waking up Tired
Fashion's apocalypse fatigue
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It’s probably one of the longest and most heated debates among clothing fanatics: what’s better, natural or synthetic insulation — merino wool or Polartec? The debate is unsettled, of course, and will probably remain so forever. Like all cultural debates, it’s not even meant to be settled. These debates appear to be settleable, but they’re not. They appear settleable because they’re formulated as questions, and questions give the impression that they have a clear cut answer (“yes,” “no”, “this,” “that”) — if not now, then definitely at some later point.
The fact is that a cultural debate constitutes an open problem, not an answerable question. A lot of fashion journalism is premised on pretending this isn’t the case. That’s not for me to say. But I’m saying it anyway. Think of the way trend predictions — one of the industry’s major occupations — are usually made. Will this item go out of style next year? And will that item be the next big thing? On one level, that’s disguising something that cannot be answered as an answerable question. Of course, nobody knows — otherwise the question wouldn’t be asked time and again. On a deeper level, it’s disguising an answer that’s already given in the question as something that still needs to be answered. For, posed in the way that they are, such questions answer themselves by being asked. Vogue wondering on the front cover whether neckties are the new trend obviously is instrumental to neckties becoming the new trend.
Now, an answerable question is unable to ask about what’s actually at stake in it. What’s at stake in it is an open problem. Such a problem isn’t meant to be solved or settled. It’s meant to tie us up in wonderful knots and invite us to come up with as many unanswerable questions as possible. That’s how it keeps our mind open and going, like an invisible force or theoretical Siren. Take: “Will this item go out of style next year?”. Rather than an unknowing “yes” or “no” (or a better-yet-uninteresting “maybe”) let our answer be any of these questions: “Who’s asking, and why?,” “What does it matter, and to whom?,” “Maybe, but how could we make sure it doesn’t?,” “Definitely, and what would be needed for its return?”
The point of this is not to be a know-it-all. It’s the exact opposite. The point is to be a not-know-it-all. The point is to be knowledgeable enough to not have to pretend as if we know things we can’t know. That’s not feigning ignorance. That’s taking it seriously and cultivating it. After all, reality — and everything in it, whether it’s people or fashion — is much more interesting when it’s not reduced to our intellectual prowess. To accept that formulating more and better questions is often our only genuine answer to a question is also doing the kind of thinking appropriate to culture. For culture, after all, is not a yes-or-no, this-or-that, a-b-c sort of thing. And we’re not all Hegels. We’re not going to lay bare its eternal logic. We’re caught in the middle just trying to make sense of this “blooming and buzzing confusion” that we call fashion.
Okay, so what’s better: natural or synthetic insulation? Both are better than the other, to a certain extent. Both are worse than the other, depending on the circumstances. That’s another way of saying that what looks like an either-or question is actually, in logicians’ lingo, an inclusive disjunction: it’s possible for both things to be true at the same time. “Natural is good, synthetic is bad” doesn’t do the trick anymore. Natural is preferable, but not always unproblematic. Synthetic is cool, but often terrible. Down and Primaloft are extremely difficult to compare. Wool is cozy and biodegradable, but most of it is of unethical origin. Raso Gommato — Egyptian cotton coated with polyurethane — is technically brilliant, but disastrous for the planet and the health of workers in the supply chain. A fast fashion shirt made of hemp is likely to have a much higher environmental footprint than an ethical alternative involving recycled polyester. You’ll get the point.
For many years “natural is good, synthetic is bad” rang true. Because of it, a GOTS label became a must-have for many clothing brands. And rightly so. Yet, because of it sustainability fatigue is now an officially recognized phenomena. (The same holds for apocalypse fatigue — that’s were we stand in the 2020s) It’s mostly used to describe consumers’ weariness of hearing about sustainability claims, be it inside or outside fashion. I feel and fear it might be more than that: increasingly many brands, big and small, seem increasingly wary of presenting themselves as “sustainable.” Think of it. Almost none of your favorite brands do it. And none of your clothes crazy friends are calling them out because of this. Why? One reason seems to be that sustainable clothing brands are popularly seen more and more as being totally “boring.” Another reason is that over the course of the 2010s the word sustainability has been appropriated by marketeers and consultants. And to be associated too strongly with their language is something to avoid — for clothing brands, for fashion journalists, for anyone, really. It’s not real. It’s not genuine. It’s not it. And rightly so. But then again, dropping sustainability because of this association also means playing into the hands of the anti-climate lobby.
What’s to be done?
Fashion is, and will always be, the world’s hall of mirrors. This in the twofold sense that it reflects what’s happening in the world, and can create confusion about whether the reflection or what’s reflected is real. At this point in time, the only way of waking up from sustainability and apocalypse fatigue seems to be for clothing brands to go post-sustainable. And that’s actually reflecting what many political scientists are saying since a few years. They’ve been making the point that “sustainability” has become the hegemonic frame shaping national governments’ and corporations’ approach to the climate catastrophe. Yet, as some of them point out, it seems clear that this mainstream approach is unable to deliver the kind of structural change that’s required. What’s worse, unsustainable (“greenwashing”) policies and decisions are forged under the name of “sustainability” as we speak.
It’s an open question what an alternative — de-growth, post-sustainable — future might look like. There’s no doubt, however, that clothing brands will be part of its creation. In fact, they’re already doing this in different ways. One category consists of brands that do not talk about sustainability all it, but just do it. Some of them remain silent about this choice, whereas others choose to speak about their silence out loud. “Luxury brands love ‘talking’ about sustainability,” as a recent Geoffrey B. Small advertisement had it: “We prefer actually doing it.” Another option is to go about sustainability in a different and/or more radical way — and it’s interesting to observe the influence of geography here. Some, like Rkive’s from New-Delhi, is focusing on one-of-a-kind garments upcycled from post-consumer waste. Others, such as Dana Lee Brown, are placing a from-soil-to-loom approach at the heart of what they do. And there are also a ton of brands that don’t care about sustainability’s uncoolness, and go full steam ahead with it. In addition to working with local, organic fabrics, a crucial part of their approach is freeing sustainable clothing from its dullness. Xenia Telunts is a good example, and so is Lichen Goods (featured in today’s second post).
Yes, it’s hard to talk about sustainability without being boring. And yes, that’s probably because everything that needs to be said about it has already been said. But no, we shouldn’t give up on the topic. And no, we should’t leave it to others who don’t really care about it. Let’s be better than that. Let’s end the fatigue. Let’s keep questioning answers. Let’s escape the yes-or-no binary. There’s one thing cooler than being cool. That’s cooling down the planet, of course.
Cover image taken from ‘Finnish Photographs of the Nuuttipukki (1928)’
I believe people who do manufacturing justice will always do so (i.e., using quality raw materials and upholding workers' rights). It's the opportunists from little to no manufacturing and fashion backgrounds who've devalued the entire lexicon related to sustainability since COVID onwards. Just my gripes as an insider~