Fashionably Conscious: Student Organization Initiative to Make a More Fashion Sustainable Conscious Community
By Julianna Guthrie
The Fashion Intelligence Project, held its first meeting this past Monday in Maloney Hall on the topic of sustainable fashion development.
Sustainable fashion consumption is a movement toward making the fashion industry establish a code of ethics to follow when producing and selling clothes. In addition, it calls on the consumer to be a mindful shopper.
The board decided to change the name in order to branch out to other students. The goal is to welcome students from other departments in order to bring people together who are interested in fashion and promote ideas about sustainable fashion consumption. In addition, the organization board hopes that this group will encourage other college campuses to set up chapters of their own.
The student organization will be under the watchful eye of Professor Mary Sheehan Warren, a marketing professor at the Busch School, who has a unique connection to the cause. Outside of the Busch school, Warren works with the Non for Profit Success in Style. Success in Style is a local boutique that focuses on providing individuals in need with the right outfit they need for success in the workplace. The Fashion Intelligence Project has partnered with Success in Style to spread its message.
At the first meeting, Warren led a presentation for a group of enthusiastic students that introduced the concept of what fashion sustainability is and why it is important. She began by recalling statistics that expose the extreme amounts of clothing and accessories Americans consume.
Her next point described what it takes to bring the American consumer these products, sometimes a price too hefty to pay. Warren laid out the dangerous labor conditions workers are subjected to in order to meet deadlines and quotas. One extreme example she made note of was the Dhaka Garment Factory collapse in Bangladesh of 2013 where 1,134 workers died after being forced to work in an unregulated, illegal building.
Warren closed her presentation with the Fashion Production Cycle, a visualization of the life of a garment from production to when it reaches the landfill. Throughout the course of the year club members will focus on the “use phase” of the cycle, the phase where the consumer can take action. Some methods highlighted by Warren was to buy less and spread out the seasons in which you buy.
“I think Fashion Sustainability is important because so much disposal of unwanted clothing is harmful to the environment,” said Ally Fink, a junior business administration and management major and the student organization president. “The textiles take long periods of time to breakdown.”
Fink has hopes that her peers will join the Fashion Intelligence Project and become more aware of the importance of fashion sustainability.
“I encourage everyone to be conscious when buying clothing because each item or purchase has an effect on the environment once you have gone through the cycle of wearing the product,” Fink explained. “It’s important that people recognize that they are not just buying a piece of clothing but that they are also affecting the environment.”
