Need for a New Fashion Design Paradigm

To avoid having such a wasteful fashion manufacturing model we need a New Fashion and Technology Paradigm by Anastasia Vouyouka, Business Owner at SITAM-AB & Telestiha Online…

Why do unsold mountains of garments ending up in landfill keep being produced? The energy consumed and wasted, the materials used unnecessarily, the economic disaster of unsold garments are researched, identified, and documented.

However, most companies do not seem to know what it is that can save this situation. They seem to be lost in this whirlpool condition of continuing to do what they have been doing for decades, while making many irrelevant changes, and avoiding the really needed ones that may be temporarily disruptive.

Despite the promises, the regrets, the hyped up claims of correcting steps, of recycling, either materials or garments, the truth seems to be boil down to these realities:

Products are being returned and the piles of unwanted garments continues to increase.

Today’s fashion and clothing consumers do not want to invest and buy what is currently on offer! Why are they not being offered what they may want to buy?

The consequence of ignoring these truths, is tons of unsold garments, of mountains of landfill to every possible place on earth, far from our eyes, in Africa, South America, Asia, contributing to a global environmental disaster.

Why? It is simply Human Nature. We see the falling tree and we miss the ailing forest. We miss the roots of what we are responsible for, and which brought us the disasters we now face.

Illusionary and unproven solutiοns seem to attract us more. These are put forward because we obviously do not know what we should be doing, and why, and while we focus only on profit, we are not willing to try to find out the real cause of all this.

In the meantime these undeniable facts hide what is lost in this process and desperately needs to be restored. We just keep chasing profit, which however, is fading in front of our eyes.

Profit and comfort and the pleasure resulting from them, make us reluctant to see and to follow the changes small, and big we need to implement to save this industry and the planet. These changes cannot compete with the pleasure that we get from convenience, they cannot compete with the feeling of security from the familiar routine.

Instead we find it safer to sneak into the data that describe those customers. We can sneak into what they like, what their habits are, and then make small uneventful adaptations in our work so that we continue doing what we do. That sounds safe enough, and keeps us trendy, because we follow these technology trends and invest in them.

But what else can be done? That is what most modern CEO’s, and managers keep saying to themselves. And they silently also keep asking, why doesn’t this work?

The answer is that brands and businesses are opting for the choices that are familiar, that are easy, the most profitable and the less disruptive ones that don’t necessarily tackle the problem head on.

Yet still, why, do consumers continue to reject the choices offered to them? Why don’t they show with their data collected so painstakingly, what they want?

Because, dear friends, the answer is that they do not know the answer themselves! What they know is that they do not want what is offered!

The long lack of sincere options for personal expression, the unavailable, non-existent, options, the unobtainable objects that were supposed to give them satisfaction, have driven consumers away from seeing themselves in the enhanced and true version/image, they believe they deserve.

The frustration  of this absence has led them to lose the sense of good taste, has numbed their aesthetic stimulants, and  has kept them uninterested and despaired of ever achieving any creative self expression. They have become simply uninterested! Momentarily they have watered down their desires and their wants, and needs.

Imagine the large proportion of consumer markets this leads down the drain, as it seems to continue. Of course it opens up some new ones, but the previous market status quo is rapidly disappearing.

Already the supply chain is disrupted for various reasons, the most important one, being the inability of big retailers to pay their debts to suppliers globally. How long can this be sustained uneventfully?

Change needs to come at every level, from textile production to the design and production of garments that consumers want and that fit perfectly. Long gone are the days of mass production and quick profits, it is time for a more considered approach that begins with quality education and industry skills, that carries forward into a customer responsive and lean approach to garment production and retail. 

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