On the cover of Vogue Taiwan’s January issue, model Peng Chang holds a popsicle made of a mixture of sewage water and garbage. In other photos within the magazine, she’s dressed in a mermaid tail, surrounded in dirty water, and covered in oil. This month’s issue of Vogue Taiwan is a so-called ‘Sustainability Issue’, drawing readers’ attention to the escalating climate crisis and the threat it poses to not only mermaids but everyone in Taiwan and the world.
The fashion industry is arguably one of the biggest climate threats. Globally, the industry accounts for about 10% of global emissions and 20% of wastewater. The production and processing of different materials, the need to transport clothes, and the complex supply chains all increase the environmental impact of clothes. In a fashion world where trends are constantly changing and consumers are encouraged to keep their wardrobe up to date, the clothing industry has an excessively large climate impact. In fact, the United Nations even estimates that the fashion industry consumes more energy than the aviation industry and shipping industry combined.
In the summer of 2016, environmentalist organisation Greenpeace held a survey about Taiwanese people’s fashion habits. The survey showed that over 50% of people said they owned more clothes than they needed and that people between the ages of 24 to 45 discard over 5 million items of clothing per year. People in Taiwan are encouraged to recycle their clothing, and many people do, however much of that recycled clothing still ends up in the incinerator rather than being sent to charity organisations or being re-sold to other countries.
This kind of behaviour has only become easier and easier in recent years thanks to the rise of online shopping. Taiwan’s biggest online shopping platform Shopee sees around 52 million visitors every month. A 2018 survey shows that Taiwanese people’s most common purchases online are clothes and accessories. According to another survey from Rakuten done in 2020, half of the people questioned say that they’ve increased their usage of online shopping since the beginning of the pandemic.
Last March, Taipei’s Fashion Week featured ‘Taipei Sustainable Collections’. This special show featured clothes with a focus on sustainability. Six different brands teamed up to show their recent creations that used new concepts and techniques such as 3D virtual technology to reduce waste and biodegradable fabrics. Taipei fashion week is a government sponsored event, which hopefully means that eco-friendly fashion is an issue that the government is concerned about.
In this month’s sustainability issue of Vogue Taiwan, there are several articles related to climate change and how the readers can lead more environmentally conscious lives. One article lists nine everyday changes to make, including keeping the cut ends of celery to grow more celery, reducing the number of laundry loads you do, driving less, and picking up plastic off the beach. These kinds of behaviours, while of course impactful and important, feel a bit weak when you think of the sheer scale of the impact made by the fashion industry. As the leading mouthpiece of the fashion industry, are articles telling people to naturally dry their clothes rather than use a drying machine really the most effective way of affecting change?
The push towards eco-friendly fashion from Vogue Taiwan and different fashion creators is commendable, necessary, and a great indicator of the direction that the industry is going in. Environmental consciousness in fashion isn’t a new topic and has been around as a concept for a long time in both Taiwan and the rest of the world. Consumer habits still haven’t seen much of a change and the industry still hasn’t pivoted away from its love for fast fashion. In the end, it won’t be models dressed as mermaids on beaches that sees an end to fast fashion, but fundamental radical changes to both our shopping habits and the production processes for the clothes that we shop for. Whether the fashion industry is willing and able to make those radical changes remains to be seen.