The fashion industry is a mess. From waste to wage theft, the impacts of the production of clothing are increasingly hard to ignore and have become issues that extend well beyond what we wear. As a former designer and someone who now teaches sustainability to fashion professionals in a graduate program, I find it frustrating to watch the industry fail to manage its broad range of negative impacts.
Like many, I was drawn to fashion because of its reputation for big-city glamour and the association with celebrity movers and shakers. I loved telling people from my suburban Ohio hometown that I lived in New York City and worked as a fashion designer. I would typically skip the messier details, such as the crappy apartment full of roommates, the low pay, the monied mean-girl culture, and above all, the totally unglamorous process of designing mass-produced clothing.
Fashion is, first and foremost, a business, and its primary goal is to make money. The global fashion industry is in every country in the world and is worth roughly $2 trillion, which is equivalent to the world’s 11th-largest economy by GDP.
Nearly everything about the production of fashion is harmful: Most fashion items are made of plastic and shed microplastics in our water systems and, ultimately, our bodies; toxic chemicals are a feature of the development of raw materials and the processing, dyeing, and finishing of textiles and clothing items; exploitative and child labor are remarkably common throughout the supply chain; and the fashion industry is responsible for a significant share of global greenhouse gas emissions. Fashion also intersects with other big-impact global sectors, including agriculture, transport, and oil and gas, leading to even bigger impacts. The list goes on.
These are the issues that drew me to work in fashion sustainability. After 15 years as a designer, I knew my own impact; I could count the hundreds of thousands of garments I had been responsible for making over the years. And fashion companies, since recognizing the negative impact of typical clothing production, have started to create sustainability, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and/or environmental, social, and governance (ESG) teams to address issues related to caustic chemical usage and dumping, dependency on fossil fuel-based materials, and the forced labor that is common in the typical fashion business model.
But sustainability isn’t only a framework for environmental and social change; it also represents big business. Addressing sustainability is one of the biggest business opportunities for the global fashion industry today. For young people looking for a career in fashion, sustainability is huge, but realizing its potential is not going to happen without intentional effort.
A recent UN climate change report offered a dire warning: The fashion industry must engage all possible solutions if we are to avoid global climate collapse. But fashion has failed to meaningfully do that. Says Amir Sokolowski, global director for climate change at CDP, the nonprofit organization that partnered with the UN to provide the reporting, "These plans are lacking in the fashion industry,” adding that CDP data ranks the fashion sector as having “one of the lowest levels of disclosure of a credible climate transition plan.”
There are many reasons for the current state of the global fashion industry — including the absence of meaningful regulation — but fashion-focused higher education is a commonly overlooked contributor to these industry issues. When I began working in fashion sustainability, for instance, it was clear I was in over my head. The skills and knowledge I had collected throughout my career as a designer and in my fashion design undergraduate program were important, but ultimately not the same skills needed to drive change along social and environmental metrics. Ultimately, I went back to school to get the missing sustainability and impact skills I didn’t get as an undergrad in fashion design years ago.
Grad school is great for some people, but it shouldn’t be used to backfill what is missing from the most common types of education programs for fashion industry participants. Many who work in the industry receive a similar education: a two-year associate's or four-year bachelor's degree in fashion design or merchandising. Across programs, especially in the United States, curricula are mostly the same, with the bulk of required credit hours focused on skills like pattern-making, draping, and developing a unique, creative vision. It is unreasonable and unethical for undergraduate fashion education programs to skip sustainability. The fashion industry is facing immense existential global challenges, and the current model of education is not preparing future fashion leaders to manage it.
Fashion education is also focused on the creative genius of the designer, which results in too many individuals who are trained in producing goods as a designer and contributes to the growth of the industry and overproduction. This focus leads to the neglect of other skills, particularly those centered on climate impacts, human rights, and sustainability. Between 2007-2017, fashion design undergraduate matriculation tripled at certain US institutions, but many did not get an adequate education in the skills necessary to make sure fashion can course correct on its climate impact.
The UN report highlighted several essential focus areas for reducing the climate impacts of the fashion industry, and there is little overlap with current fashion curricula. Fashion education does not prepare students to understand or address the most pressing needs and biggest opportunities in the fashion industry.
This year, a preliminary study conducted by my student Lindsay Cousins analyzed six of the most well-known and well-attended fashion design undergraduate programs in the US. The study found that sustainability and social justice represented an average of only 3.8% of core fashion undergraduate-program curricula.
Roles that center on practicing sustainability and reducing negative social impacts could represent more opportunities and income for fashion students. Right now, the average tuition (including private schools and in- and out-of-state rates for public schools) for a four-year fashion degree across the top 10 US fashion schools is $142,514, while the average salary for an entry-level design job is $53, 411, according to data reported by Glassdoor. Opportunities for fashion design jobs are expected to grow at only 3% over the next decade; meanwhile, fashion programs keep churning out thousands of candidates yearly for too few jobs. But roles across sectors that list even one sustainability-related skill grew at a rate of 15.2% between February 2022 and February 2023, according to a LinkedIn report, and sustainability-related work can earn more than double the median income when compared to all occupations.
As with most problems, things won’t change without collective action. So how do we hold both our love for fashion and the need to drive change in the industry? How do we take the future of the planet and the industry into our hands and learn valuable skills important for the task? I have some ideas.
If you want to attend fashion school, ask about sustainability and social justice curricula when speaking to university recruiters and program leads. Consider another discipline that is rooted in sustainability, social justice, or a climate-focused curriculum, and take some fashion classes to blend your skills and interests. You can also opt for programs that allow you to develop intersectional programming between different disciplines. Ask about collaborating with the earth sciences, sustainability management, political science, government affairs, engineering, or data science.
If you’re in fashion school now, you can work with your advisor to fill any elective with sustainability-focused courses oriented to the skills noted in the UN report. You can find a faculty champion or mentor and talk with them about your interests and concerns, or form or join a group focused on exploring fashion sustainability, like the Sustainable Fashion Initiative at the University of Cincinnati or Unravel at UCLA.
You can and should force the topic in all of your learning opportunities. You may not get to decide on the curriculum, but you are still in control of what you choose to focus on within your class projects. Get political. Build a coalition of likeminded students. Petition the school. Speak to your department chair. Talk to the dean of the school. Get involved in student government. Get involved in institutional decision-making.
A sustainable fashion industry is not possible until fashion education first embodies sustainability. Higher-education institutions are not passive participants in shaping the global fashion industry; as with the industry itself, higher education in fashion must be accountable for its role in climate change, human rights abuses, and the destructive state of the fashion industry.
You are crucial to creating that accountability. We must come together to drive meaningful change in the fashion industry and demand change in fashion higher education. Your love of fashion is a powerful tool for creating new, shared futures — and your voice is crucial to creating a fashion education system that makes sustainable change possible.
This story was originally published on January 29, 2024, and was updated on May 1, 2024.
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