We know textile and fashion industry is the 3rd largest growing industry in the whole world. With time the growth of the industry has also taken the waste percentage at heights. The textile industry produces 13 million tons of waste. I am currently studying fashion design and got an opportunity to attend a seminar on the “Awareness of reusable and sustainable fashion”. It was a beautiful discussion between group of three reputed professors from reputed universities and college. Whatever I learnt from that discussion is what I will share with y’all today.
There were 3 speakers in the discussion Mrs. Subarna Ghosh (A professor at Amity University Kolkata), Mr. Ashish Kumar Samanta (A professor & Former HOD dept. of jute and fibre technology, IJT, University of Calcutta), Dr. Professor Deepali Singhee (Principal and Professor JDBI) and Mr. Soumen Ghosh (Freelance Designer & Concept developer) as moderator.
The seminar started with brief yet knowledgeable discussion on what is fashion, a way you dress yourself to portray who you are and your personality is what fashion is and fashion designing is the art you create through fabrics. The opportunities you have in the fashion industry are growing with time and the roots of this industry is widely spreading in many ways all over the world. Fashion has been there since people first started wearing clothes, then there was not much awareness and also no opportunities to grab in this industry. It wasn’t even that much big as an industry so with time here the seed sown is growing as an endless tree full of new branches, fruits and flowers.
A new lesson which I learnt was fashion designing should not just be about designing out of the box looks and creating something avant-garde. It should serve a purpose or create an impact on the people as you are designing for an audience. The reason why the fashion industry is being considered as the third in producing wastage because the purpose of making the garments was not being properly served. The trend of not wearing the clothes after one-time use has created a mess. Millions of tons of clothes is found in the dumping zone every year from all over the world. “Fast fashion”, a term which has been trending because of Zara, H&M and many more such brands are one of the major reasons of generating so much waste. “Fast fashion is a term comprising of three meanings produced cheaply, worn briefly and discarded quickly”.
The current trend of not repeating clothes, discarding clothes that are no longer in use is resulting to be extremely bad for the environment. There are many ways old clothes can be recycled or up-cycled. We are all familiar with re-cycling, textile re-cycling is a term that means re-processing of discarded fibers, yarns, and fabrics into something useful, whereas up-cycling means changing or making the discarded garments into new designed garments which actually helps in reducing wastage in a huge amount. Facts have proven that this industry will expand up-to 60% by 2030. If we don’t start taking steps now it will lead to a massacre in future.
For your knowledge: Cheap and discarded garments are sent from the Western Europe to the Eastern parts of Europe like Bulgaria, Romania and there people use the as fuels to cook emitting harmful gases.
There are several ways people have come up with to stop the bad from increasing such as slow fashion, re-wear and vintage fashion, re-inventing, recycling and up-cycling. Slow fashion means creating clothes considering the surroundings’ well-being, which lasts longer, creating evergreen styles and this helps in giving up the urge to impulse buy and then discard. Coming to the second term re-wear and vintage fashion is wearing old clothes or buying evergreen styles, shopping from local or thrift stores and re-inventing means re-making or re-styling old clothes. These steps are helping the industry and creating a positive change. It is now are responsibility to create awareness about these thoughtful ways so we all can take small steps but create a big positive change and let out tree of fashion grow endlessly in a much healthier and fruitful way.
