Sustainability Must Mean Decolonization

hi everyone

i am so excited to share space with you

even if it’s virtual this time around

my name is adithy meyer and i’m a

sustainable fashion blogger

photojournalist and labor rights

activist

seven years ago my relationship with

fashion went from retail therapy

to following arbitrary notions of what

was in

to a deeply personal exploration of my

identity

and decolonization i remember my starts

in the sustainable fashion world clearly

it was 2013 and i was just about to

start my first year of my undergraduate

college career

design and aesthetics had always been

powerful mediums for me to explore my

south asian heritage

and fashion was quickly becoming another

medium to do so

however a few months later i learned

about the ronald plaza factory collapse

rana plaza was an eight-story garment

factory in dhaka bangladesh producing

for some of the world’s biggest

fast fashion retailers one day

structural cracks were found in the

building

and it was ordered to evacuate however

there was so much pressure from upper

management to have workers complete

orders

that they were called back into work the

next day

over one thousand one hundred workers

were killed when this eight story

garment factory collapsed

over 2500 were injured

rana plaza frames the biggest industrial

disaster

of our time and for me rwana plaza

catalyzed a new understanding of fashion

no longer was fashion just about that

pretty dress

fashion was about the politics of labor

to the environmental impact of fashion

to the fact that communities of color

globally are disproportionately affected

by the fashion industry but it wasn’t

just me that the rhonda plaza industry

shook up

the larger fashion narrative was

affected as well

what came next was the rise of

conversation around sustainability

and ethical fashion at its best

sustainable fashion was about

transparent supply chains to fair labor

practices

however there was a more insidious side

to sustainable fashion on the rise

the idea that sustainability was

something you had to buy

common sustainable fashion platitudes

like vote with their dollar

inform not only how one could engage

with this movement

but more importantly who could engage

with this movement

those who could afford it for me as

someone that came from a low income

background

i began to search for a narrative of

sustainability beyond just consumption

for me i came to realize that true

sustainability began at home

both as a cultural standard and economic

necessity

far before sustainability became

contextualized

in the consumer act that it is today

from

using all of our food containers to

saving our plastic bags to hand-me-downs

and

normal practices of mending clothes all

of these

were a lifestyle not just a consumer

choice and it was a lifestyle that i had

known before sustainability was

rebranded

recontextualized and reintroduced as a

purely consumer act

more and more sustainability became

about reorienting myself with ancestral

roots and practices

especially those that existed prior to

colonization

more and more sustainability became the

unlearning

of constant consumption but most

importantly

sustainability became a means for

decolonization

don’t get me wrong conscious consumerism

is incredibly

important however the onus of ethics

shouldn’t be completely on

the consumer rather we need to hold the

industry accountable

the industry that has largely normalized

violence

as part of its business model

sustainability requires context

we must question the systems and

structures at play

that set the conditions for that fateful

day of the ronald plaza factory collapse

because it’s important to remember rhona

plaza was not an unavoidable disaster

rather wanna plaza was the manifestation

of a system that was predicated on speed

at all costs even human lives

i began to question what is the

historical context that created a system

that operated in this way

rana plaza spoke to a deeper system of

oppression

that was predicated on the oppression of

black and brown bodies

based on a form of institutionalized

racism

and a colonial past

colonialism is often seen as a distant

abstraction

yet colonial mentalities and practices

continue to reign supreme in how

businesses

operate today when i speak about

colonial practice in the fashion

industry

it refers to systems predicated on the

exploitation

and extraction of resources or labor

as the means for infinite growth and

success

and most of these resources are

extracted precisely in countries

destabilized by colonial violence

like many industries that rely on

production in the global

south for consumption in the global

north the fashion industry is rooted in

an

unequal exchange the unequal exchange is

often the exchange of manufactured

products

produced at shockingly low prices due to

labor that costs

near nothing to be sold at higher

margins in the global

north we know this to be true especially

in the global fashion industry that is

predicated on the idea of the global

race to the bottom

which is the idea that brands produce as

much as they can

as fast as they can as cheap as they can

and this means heading to these

countries that are reeling from the

impacts of colonization

making them an especially vulnerable

workforce

the business model has always headed to

these countries

poorest countries to plunder and this is

not because

of better infrastructure or better

factories rather

this is because these are sacrifice

zones

so what are sacrifice zones

sacrifice zones are places in the world

whose vulnerable populations

undergo resource extraction and

exploitation

for the sake of continued economic

prosperity and growth but we need to

question

economic prosperity and growth for who

this is the racism built into the system

throughout history we’ve seen how false

hierarchies of power

often rooted in race have been the first

steps towards dehumanization

and violence in order to maintain

colonial projects

history shows that this is especially

true for the textile

and fashion industry in 1664

the east india company was established

as the largest importer of cotton to

europe

a systemic plan was implemented to

subdue the indian textile economy

which made up 25 of the world’s economy

at that time

and coerced indian farmers to abandon

their farming

which was of subsistence crops to cotton

crops

not only would this eventually subject

farmers to a cycle of interest-laden

debt

it would also greatly diminish the food

supply

india was to constantly supply britain

with the raw material of cotton

and britain would then sell us back the

cotton cloth

at a premium this would ensure

a relationship where the colonizers

remained in power and the colonized were

made subdued and profitable for the

colonizers

the extraction and destruction of

artisanal

industries and agricultural practices

that the land could not sustain

ensued what’s really important to note

here

is the pattern of exploited labor around

the world

which positioned britain as the workshop

of the world

british manufactured clots severely

undermined the indian cotton industry

during the 19th century

especially due to the speed of the u.s

britain

caught in production system which was

predicated

by the use of slave labor in america

enslaved african peoples allowed white

plantation owners in the south

to garner unsurmountable wealth from

cotton

exploited labor and agricultural

dexterity set the groundwork for

the international fashion industry which

was america’s

first big business boom that is

after america’s indigenous populations

were forcibly removed for their land

to set the groundwork for the fertile

land for plantations

history also shows us that localized

textile production and fashion systems

can often freely sacrifice zones from

their hostage positions

during india’s fight for independence

from the british raj

we had the rise of the kadhi movement

kadhi which is an indian indigenous form

of hand-spun

hand-woven cotton was used as a tool of

resistance

gandhi helped spur the kadhi movement

which sought to boycott cloth

manufactured

industrially in britain promoting the

spinning of kadhi for rural

self-employment and self-reliance

this constructed the framework for the

larger swadeshi movement

now known as the make in india campaign

knowing this history is important

because it helps inform the literal ways

that we can decolonize our system

which lies in reorienting our

relationship with

land and labor if the sustainable

fashion industry

exists to challenge the way the industry

has operated

it must go beyond buying our way into a

new reality

remember we need to question what is the

type of system that we are trying to

sustain

true sustainability means we must

decolonize fashion

after all we can’t expect to fix the

problem

with the same culture that has created

it

so what does it mean then to decolonize

the industry

to decolonize the industry is to address

wealth inequality

the fashion industry cannot operate

without the high-skilled labor of

garment workers

yet ceos make millions off the backs of

those that earn the least

we need to remember it’s not capitalists

who

create capital it is the labor behind

the label

to decolonize the fashion industry is

also to reorient

metrics of success beyond the idea of

unlimited

exponential monetary growth the

sustainable fashion movement must mark a

key shift on how we view labor

garment workers are not expendable

garment workers are artisans and

fashion is art not a disposable

commodity

the sustainable fashion movement must

explore business models that are rooted

in circularity and longevity

to decolonize the fashion industry is to

dismantle

a system predicated on speed so much

speed

that it comes at the sacrifice of

quality the environment

and garment worker rights

to decolonize the fashion industry is

also to go beyond

a model rooted in arbitrary trends that

are constantly changing

a key pillar of sustainability is after

all

personal style

and most importantly to decolonize

fashion

is therefore to also interrogate power

and hierarchy

a conversation that demands an

intersectional approach

that is tied to talking about class

gender race and more

we need a question who has access an

agency in this space

who is stripped of that and why

the sustainable fashion movement must

center black

indigenous and people of color as

leading actors

these communities have nearly always had

a historical sustainable relationship

i want to close with this idea

sustainability is not about reinventing

the wheel sustainability

is about following the leads of cultures

that have always had

symbiotic regenerative relationships to

the planet and people

that’s to say sustainability is

decolonization thank you