by Julia V. Pretsfelder

“The American fashion industry began as a system built on the economics of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the exportation of cotton...It’s time to acknowledge the deep history fashion has with the legacy of exploitation and disposability of people and planet so that we can move forward toward an industry that benefits all life,” Whitney McGuire, co-founder of Sustainable Brooklyn, said in acknowledgement of her Black ancestors’ labor at a climate positivity conference.

Describing all that’s racist in the fast fashion industry is a challenge in an article tailored to internet length. Yet, recent responses to performative allyship from superficially conscious brands have brought activists’ long standing discussions about exploitation and greenwashing to broader audiences.

These debates have further outlined three pillars of fast fashion’s racism that we, and I say that to white consumers like me in particular, must demolish: a disregard for BIPOC workers’ lives, anti-Black corporate and retail environments and the whitewashing of sustainable fashion that steals from Black artists and stifles Black voices.

So-called transparent brands are promoting an environmentalism that is ahistorical and watered down in order to be palatable to the white and wealthy. With all the attention directed towards patting themselves on the back for some carbon neutrality, they have hardly cultivated an understanding of environmental injustice, which must go hand-in-hand with racial justice.

In an Instagram post on May 30th, Everlane, my ex favorite brand, proclaimed, “Enough...We are all 100% Human.” If you didn’t cringe at the incorporation of a branded statement into a cry for racial justice, scroll further. Depending on what your Instagram algorithm floats to the top, the first comment you see would likely be, “My return was delivered back to you on 5/20...still no word on my refund. Please respond.” Disgruntled customers’ self-centered comments below statements of support for Black lives capture how “ethical” brands were not so radical to begin with. 

Below complaints about Everlane’s delayed delivery during a pandemic, Emi Ito (aka little_kotos_closet) a Japanese American activist and educator known for her work on slow fashion and multiracial families commented, “This is a dictionary definition of performative allyship right here. You union busted your own workers and your company constantly rips off the designs of small sustainable makers. What is your company actually going to DO to be more ethical and fight for Black Lives?” The contrast between these comments begs us to ask, how do brands make those they’ve knighted conscious consumers through purchases care about the BIPOC most impacted by the climate crisis as much as they care about the delayed arrival of their jumpsuits?

Union busting, as outlined by Everlane U, is one of many traditions in the fast fashion industry with deep roots in racism. In the face of fainting from 65 hour work weeks, sexual harassment and unpaid overtime, of course garment workers want to build power collectively. Black and brown laborers behind PVH and The Children’s Place’s products, from Cambodia to Ethiopia, have been fired and arrested when attempting to unionize or speak out about factory conditions. Fast fashion’s systemic denial of laborers’ rights has become more dire during the pandemic as billionaire fashion conglomerates cancel their orders and refuse to pay workers despite pressure from the #PayUp campaign. This is merely seven years after Fashion Revolution rose up when awful labor conditions erupted in the face of the Rana Plaza collapse, which killed over 1,100 Bangladeshi garment workers. Foreign mega-brands deny the humanity of the Black and brown lives by treating them as cogs in a machine to keep products cheap. Soon, they will claim that change does not happen overnight even though they’re billionaires who have been called out for decades.

The overproduction built into fast fashion is also racist. Aja Barber, a Black writer and sustainable fashion consultant who always brilliantly untangles the intersections between colonization, sustainable fashion, fast fashion and racism sums this up in the hashtag #haveyoutriedmakinglessstuff. As Barber noted in a fantastic conversation with Layla Saad, ”We are taking from one group of people of color, consuming, and then basically disposing on another group of people of color, and that is a colonialist line.” Discarded fast fashion ends up with kayayei in Ghana or in pacas across Guatemala, cheapening local artisan craft before getting dumped in a landfill.

The only thing circular about fast fashion brands is the reproduction of racism from colonialist supply chains to North American storefronts. In theory, the fact that Anthropologie, exposed by former employees via whistleblower @diet_prada, used the code name “Nick” for Black shoppers, who associates followed around the store, should come as no surprise. This racist practice comes from URBN who brought us “Ghettopoly” and patches reminiscent of what Jews had to wear in the Holocaust thanks to Urban Outfitters and countless examples of white girls appropriating indigenous headdresses from Free People. So, where does this surprise and consumers’ amnesia come from? As Remake, a community of activists fighting to end fast fashion, pointed out in a recent post, these brands capitalize upon an image of “aspirational” women’s empowerment that consumers continually fall for. Ayesha Barenblat, Remake’s founder, writes, “Through shallow marketing and commodification of social movements, brands deplete the messages of the activists on the frontline just to put more money in their own wallets.”

When Reformation posted a few organizations where they planned to donate an unidentified amount, Black employees’ courageously testified to the racial trauma, segregation and denied opportunities they experienced at the company. “Your practices at the store do NOT reflect this statement, and you should all be ashamed that you have never acknowledged the needs and concerns of your Black workers,” wrote Aliyah Salmon from @tyrabanks_official on Instagram.

While doubts of Ref’s sustainability had been simmering as the company produced new designs monthly and dwindled in using 50 to 15% deadstock fabric in recent years, endangering BIPOC employees confirmed that their flimsy “environmentalism” recycled the racism we find across the fashion industry.

Hopefully, knocking Ref off of its pedestal will divorce the dominant cultural concept of sustainable fashion from blondes wearing ethereal pale linen slacks. Maybe that faux pastoral image has just infected my imagination because I am salt calling sugar white. Even so, as brands scramble to label themselves anti-racist, we must look to fashion history and Black historians like Shelby Ivey Christie to stop them from carrying out the pattern of robbing Black creators as fast and high fashion powerhouses did with the urbanwear movement. “We have a movement based on false pretenses and appropriation,” Dominique Drakeford, founder of Melanin And Sustainable Style, says in her IGTV lesson on Decolonizing the Sustainability Movement, “Marketing has done a great job of using visual and textual images to reinforce the credibility of whiteness with regards to sustainability.” One way we can disrupt this whitewashed and greenwashed vocabulary to decolonize our understanding of ethical fashion is through supporting small Black-owned businesses.

It’s not the place of fast fashion brands to define what reparations look like, and white consumers must not applaud doing the bare minimum. Brands can flaunt as many of their baby steps towards diversity as they want, but until they pay their Black and brown workers a livable wage, support and acknowledge the work of BIPOC creators, and use their platforms to promote intersectional environmentalism, I’m not buying it.

Stay tune for our list of Black-owned sustainable brands and creators to check out.