Immigrants Are Long-Time Passengers on the Sustainable Fashion Train
Image courtesy: Marie Anna Lee
Hand-me-downs. Clearance sections. Clothes made from scratch. This was my introduction to fashion as a child. I strolled around the neighborhood on my scooter in my sister’s t-shirt, my cousin’s jeans and my dad’s baseball hat. I unapologetically scavenged through the clearance section of every store since I learned how to tie my shoes. On my first day of kindergarten, I strutted into the classroom wearing a jumper my mom stitched for me. I was reared by my immigrant parents to approach fashion by repurposing unwanted and unused items.
Although, I had not admitted that I got a lot of my clothes through these ways until two years ago – when fashion sustainability became “trendy.”
Corporations like Shein, Zara and H&M are manufacturing clothing items faster than ever, becoming some of the biggest corporations in this current era of fast fashion. Their high productivity creates a surplus of items with low prices which entice many consumers. While the costs of clothes from these corporations are low and therefore more affordable for many, the rapid production comes with bigger costs: cheaper quality and environmental damage.
Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the dangers of fast fashion, and the demand for sustainable fashion is beginning to dominate the industry. Shopping at thrift stores and websites like thredUP and Facebook Marketplace has become popular, and the secondhand sector is projected to overtake the fast fashion industry by 2029.
What is Sustainable Fashion?
Image courtesy: Bicanski
Sustainable fashion is an umbrella term for any “products, processes, activities, and actors” that serve to make the fashion industry more carbon-neutral. The term also refers to fashion movements that vouch for “equality, social justice, animal welfare, and ecological integrity.”
When looking at this definition, we see that sustainable fashion is more than just the environment. The systems at play and the groups they harm have been historically overlooked; over 150 million individuals in lower-income countries work in these manufacturing facilities under poorly maintained conditions with low wages, and the materials used to create many clothing items are unnecessarily and painfully extracted from animals. It is important to vouch for sustainable fashion because you would also be vouching for the cessation of these cruel, improper and inhumane practices.
Public figures like Leonardo DiCaprio, who has vocalized his support for corporate plans and legislation for sustainable manufacturing in the past, and Meghan Markle, who recently wore a top-to-bottom outfit made with sustainable materials at a summit in the United Kingdom on Sept. 5, are using their platforms to popularize sustainable fashion and therefore compel corporations to follow suit.
But before we give the trophy to corporations and celebrities for spotlighting sustainable fashion, we’d like to give it up for the many immigrant communities who have always prioritized sustainability in their traditions.
Why Do Immigrants Live Sustainably?
Image courtesy: Artem Beliaikin
Many immigrants arrived in the United States with everything they owned. In their home countries, they were used to lacking necessities and opportunities, and they had no choice but to make do with what they had. Even in their arrival to a new place, they did not have the resources to purchase pristine, expensive clothing items and accessories like many established citizens in the U.S. could. Reusing and repurposing their possessions was not a chosen lifestyle, but a survival instinct.
They may not have had the wealth, but they had an unmatched sense of creativity and passion to use their belongings as innovations for nearly any purpose – removing the loose strings on old clothes and using them to embroider designs onto jackets, jeans and blankets, or using unused shower curtains or blankets to create shirts, dresses, pants or shoes, or using cardboard to make sandals.
The possibilities are endless when it comes to the creativity of immigrant families.
Remember This
Image courtesy: Bargain Box Naples
Though I am proud I was raised to keep the lifespan of a clothing item as long as I could and I still do, I retain bitter feelings about the insults I received for wearing handmade clothes and hand-me-downs. In elementary school, I openly expressed my joy about a sweater my mom made me out of one of my sister’s old dresses. My classmates then insulted me, saying my clothes were “old,” “dirty” and “ugly.”
I cannot help but be reminded of that time when seeing how corporations and celebrities advocate for fashion sustainability and how people consequently flock to thrift stores and other secondhand means of getting clothes now.
What was once seen as “old” and “dirty” is now seen as “innovative” and “affordable,” and companies are taking advantage of this positive view of sustainable fashion by introducing over-priced clothing items with specific styles to redefine (and ruin) the idea of fashion sustainability.
What was once every immigrant’s way of getting by in this world is now getting monopolized by corporations and becoming a commodity in the fashion industry.
Fashion sustainability is not solely a trend, not solely a sector waiting to get gentrified, but a lifestyle that was and has always been an integral part of the immigrant experience.
Strike Out,
Writer: Zarin Ismail
Editor: Daniella Conde
Gainesville
