The Sustainable Fashion Conversation Is Missing the Point and Also Missing Half the Population

I want to start with something I have been hesitant to say out loud.

I shop at ultra fast fashion brands sometimes. For photoshoots mostly. And for a long time I felt quietly ashamed about that because the sustainability conversation in fashion has become so moralistic that admitting you buy from certain places feels like admitting you do not care about the planet. And I do care. Which is exactly why the shame never fully made sense to me.

Here is what I actually think is going on.

The sustainable fashion conversation is having the wrong argument. It has become a conversation about where you shop rather than how you shop. And those are genuinely different things with genuinely different implications. But before I get into that, I want to name something that the ethical fashion world almost never acknowledges.

The advice to simply buy better, buy less, buy from ethical independent designers, assumes a set of circumstances that a significant portion of the population does not have. It assumes you can afford the $200 t-shirt. It assumes the ethical brand makes your size. It assumes you live somewhere that ships to or has access to those options.

I live in Asia. I have a curvier body by Western standards, which in the context of Asian sizing means I am regularly reaching for an L or XL and still finding that things do not fit the way they should. And I am not talking about extreme sizing. I am talking about a body that is completely normal in a global context being treated as an afterthought by both mainstream and ethical fashion markets. The slow fashion world talks constantly about sustainability but its size range rarely goes beyond what would be considered a medium in the US. The ethical independent designer whose work I genuinely love often does not make my size, does not ship to Bangkok, and charges prices that assume a New York or London salary.

So when someone tells me to just shop more sustainably, I need them to understand that the sustainable option is not always accessible. And that is not an excuse. That is a structural problem with the sustainable fashion industry that nobody wants to talk about because it is easier to blame the consumer than to fix the supply chain.

Now here is where I am also going to be honest about my own role in this.

I have absolutely been the victim of buying everything because it is so cheap. The dopamine hit of adding fifteen things to a cart because the total is still under fifty dollars is real. I have bought things I wore once or twice and forgot about. I have bought things specifically because they were cheap enough that it felt low stakes even if I was not sure I actually wanted them. That pattern is not ethical regardless of where the item came from. And I own that.

But here is what I keep coming back to. I remember going to H&M and Zara before Covid and finding things that had actual personality. Interesting cuts, specific colors, pieces that felt considered. I still have things from fifteen years ago that I wear regularly because the quality was genuinely there and the design was interesting enough to stay relevant. I go into those same stores now and I genuinely cannot tell them apart from each other. Everything is the same vague beige. The same oversized silhouette. The same fabric that pills after three washes. The quality has declined significantly while the sustainability conversation has gotten louder and I find that tension very interesting.

Because the reality is this. A $200 t-shirt worn once and then forgotten in the back of a wardrobe is not more sustainable than a $15 t-shirt worn fifty times and washed with care. The price tag is not the measure. The relationship you have with the item is the measure. How many times you wear it. How you wash and maintain it. Whether you bought it with intention or impulse. Whether it stays in circulation or ends up in a landfill after three uses.

Studies show the average fast fashion item is worn between seven and ten times before being discarded. That is the problem. Not the price. Not even necessarily the production, though production conditions matter enormously and deserve their own honest conversation. The problem is the disposability mindset. The treating of clothing as single-use entertainment. The buying of things just because the algorithm showed them to you and the price made it feel harmless.

I have shifted my own thinking around this, not to perfection because perfection is not the goal, but toward intentionality. Before I buy something now I ask whether I can see myself wearing it for years. Not just for one season. Not just for the photoshoot. For years. And if the answer is no, I put it back regardless of the price. That one question has changed how I shop more than any amount of sustainability guilt ever did.

The sustainable fashion conversation will become genuinely useful the day it stops being a moral performance and starts being a practical one. The day it acknowledges that size accessibility is a real barrier. That geographic accessibility is a real barrier. That economic accessibility is a real barrier. And that the consumer who buys thoughtfully from an ultra fast fashion brand because it is the only place that carries their size in their budget and actually ships to their country is making a more conscious choice than the consumer who buys from an ethical brand once a season for the Instagram caption and never wears it again.

Where something is made matters. How something is made matters. The conditions of the people who made it matter enormously. But how you value, care for, and wear what you own is where your actual impact lives.

Buy less. Wear it more. Take care of it like it cost more than it did.

That is the whole practice. And it is available to everyone regardless of budget, size, or postcode.

📒Sources📒

Business of Fashion, 2024: "The 7 to 10 Wear Problem in Fast Fashion"

Good On You: "What Is Ethical Fashion and Why Does It Matter?"goodonyou.eco

Remake: "Fast Fashion and the Race to the Bottom"remake.world