The logic of sustainability: institutional transformation towards a new culture of fashion

Abstract

Benefiting from the Market System Dynamics (MSD) approach, this study examines changes taking place in the fashion industry to become more socially and ecologically responsible and the roles of different institutional logics and multiple institutional actors in this transformation. Ethnography is used as the research method, supported by in-depth interviews and secondary data. The findings show how the two dominant logics of the fashion system – logic of art and logic of commerce – have social and environmental impacts, necessitating the emergence of a new ‘logic of sustainability.’ These three logics both intersect and clash, which facilitate or hinder the institutionalisation of a sustainable fashion system. The study explores these underpinning tensions towards a ‘new culture of fashion,’ which does not reject the logics of the existing market, but seeks to expand them by introducing the new logic of sustainability.