Slow Fashion in a Fast Fashion World: Promoting Sustainability and Responsibility

TLDR

Fast fashion’s rapid production has transformed the industry but generates a large carbon footprint and social concerns, while legal frameworks remain slow or ineffective. The chapter examines the fashion industry’s environmental footprint, critiques fast fashion’s rise and legal inadequacies, and calls for more responsible corporate behavior. It analyzes the fast fashion model’s growth and the law’s failure to protect intellectual property and address environmental and social harms. The authors argue that slow fashion, by linking suppliers, producers, and consumers more closely, offers an alternative that enhances sustainability and corporate responsibility.

Abstract

Through its rapid production methods that supply the latest catwalk styles almost instantaneously to the high street, the fast fashion model has revolutionized the fashion industry, while generating a significant carbon footprint and a host of social concerns. Yet, the law is either slow or ineffective in promoting sustainability in a world obsessed with image and social connectivity, while outdated notions of companies continue to dominate the legal academy. This chapter initially examines the fashion industry’s environmental footprint. Then, it examines the rise of the fast fashion model and law’s inadequacy to prevent the model from undermining intellectual property rights or effectively address the model’s detrimental impact on environmental and social sustainability. The chapter then challenges traditional notions of corporate personality, calling for more responsible corporate behavior and greater legal scrutiny. Finally, the chapter considers various issues to enhance ethical behavior in companies, arguing that the slow fashion movement provides an alternative paradigm to the fast fashion model, since the slow fashion movement connects suppliers and producers more closely with consumers, thereby enhancing sustainability and corporate responsibility.