As Narratives Go Around in Circles, a New Fashion System Will Have to Emerge at Some Point

The circular fashion overdrive starts with the ANTE (A New Textiles Economy: Redesigning Fashion’s Future) report of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF), and all subsequent grey literature seems to stem from it in one way or the other. It seems the global fashion industry, still finding a way to grapple with the mess it was in and the mess it had itself created, had some kind of intellectual vacuum, and the ANTE report filled that void. Would you agree to that contention?
Talia Hussain: Yes, circular fashion becomes the dominant answer to fashion sustainability with the launch of the ANTE report. Other academics acknowledge this in their writing. The EMF did a lot of work creating that alignment across industry, academia and policymakers. So, the report is not just a publication, but represents a network of powerful people and organisations who want to stake their claim on the future of the fashion industry. Of course, you can't really succeed in these sectors without sharing a certain set of ideas, assumptions and language. So, these people and organisations are in positions of power because of their ability to think inside the box of the current system. So, I agree there is an intellectual vacuum and void of new ideas, but I wouldn't say that the ANTE report 'filled' so much as papered over it.

The approach is incredibly superficial. One of the things our paper shows is that circular fashion uses words and phrases that imply new ideas—design thinking, systems thinking, paradigm—but they never define and use those concepts, nor do they refer to the work of people in those fields. I don't talk about waste in the paper (it was already quite long), but it's a key concept in circular fashion and another great example of how superficial it is. In all the reports and the academic literature too, no one ever defines what 'waste' is. Is it used textiles? Production leftovers? Deadstock? Pollution? Crop residues? In ANTE, waste is all of these things without differentiation. In operations management, there is an established framework for identifying waste — the '8 wastes' from Lean or Toyota Production System. It's a really well known definition, with potential insights for the fashion industry (overproduction and inventory are two of the 8 wastes) — but no one thinks to even look at it.

There is another problem. Prima facie, at least, it seems It increasingly seems that brands and manufacturers like concepts of recycling and circularity since those keep production (and therefore, sales too) going. It makes sense if the wheel (or circle) keeps spinning faster and grows bigger too. It's the same business by other means. Comments, please.
Talia Hussain: Absolutely. Circular fashion dresses up the idea that the industry can carry on doing exactly what they're doing, and this will change everything. Designers will design better products and everything will change. It validates what they are doing now—designing clothes—as a solution to too many clothes. Marketers will convince people to buy these new products or services by making them seem cool, which is what marketers do now. Retailers can keep selling. Firms will grow their profits. Technology will solve everything. And it is all packaged up with businessy-sounding buzzwords and jargon that make it sound exciting and new. The dark comedy of the situation is that if you did follow all the prescriptions of circular fashion, implementing resale and rental and textile recycling, it would result in an enormous revenue loss. The industry is so desperate and thirsty to keep going, they are chasing a mirage.

The idea propounded by the EMF is today the prevalent narrative, and leave alone challenging, but even questioning it could be construed as blasphemy. So, what has the feedback been so far?
Talia Hussain: People are absolutely still promoting the circular economy for fashion and saying how necessary it is. Policymaking and research resources are all directed at circularity. I think, unfortunately, that will continue for some time. Although, I also notice there are some cracks beginning to appear. Some people working in the area are starting to examine the numbers, asking if circular fashion is really good for business and if it's really delivering environmental benefits.

On the one hand, that's good because we will have lots of evidence that circularity isn't working as promised. On the other, if you're busy measuring how many new garment sales have been avoided by brand-led resale programmes, you're not looking at other important issues like what's happening for garment workers or textile recyclers, who are not benefitting from these initiatives. I think the people who are into circularity will keep their blinkers on, and stay focussed on these narrow topics while the broader system continues producing harms. But I've had some really great comments from people who say the paper got them to step back, look at the bigger picture, and start thinking about what other possibilities there might be. So maybe in time the conversation will turn away from circular fashion towards developing more substantial ideas.

The fast fashion and polyester frenzy during the turn of the millennium and spilling over into the early years of the 2000s was largely driven by consultancies. Yet today, these very consultancies are at the forefront of the sustainability and circularity discussions and plans. Comments, please.
Talia Hussain: Maddening, isn't it? These are also the people who kicked off the outsourcing craze of the 90's, which has exacerbated labour exploitation in fashion. Or think back just three years to Spring 2022 — consultancies were publishing their thought leadership pieces about how NFTs in the Metaverse would transform fashion, make it sustainable, and so on. Did that happen? No, it was nonsense that fell apart before the year ended. Now it's generative AI. How will ChatGPT and Midjourney solve water pollution? Spoiler alert: they won't. These consultancies are selling a product and their product is management fads. As with fast fashion, it doesn't matter that the product is of a poor quality and doesn't deliver over the long term, because the customer will be back looking for more quick fixes when the next vacuous trend arrives.

Accepting grey literature as the gospel truth comes with pitfalls. What this also means is that the industry is and will be on the wrong path. In other words, the mess is going to get messier. What is your understanding of how things will turn out to be?
Talia Hussain: I waver between optimism and pessimism. The pessimist in me thinks that this industry will just carry on exploiting and polluting and overproducing as long as they are able to. However, the viability of doing so is under increasing strain. Partly from internal pressures, like commodity prices, resource scarcity, falling margins and so on. And partly from external ones. This includes government regulation and demand for change from civil society and customers, but also the increasingly volatile international trade situation. Everything that can't go on for ever eventually stops, and so a new fashion system will have to emerge at some point. That will happen either by force or by choice. The optimist in me says that we could choose to create a better system.