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