Panelists and WashU professors Michelle DeLair, Marcus Foston, and Mary Ruppert-Stroescu discuss fast-fashion during the first-ever Sustainable Fashion Week (Ben Gondzur | Contributing Photographer).

“People have just barely now started thinking about that next step. What happens after we’ve consumed?” said Mary Ruppert-Stroescu, Associate Professor of Fashion Design at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. She’s referencing the millions of tons of textile products discarded each year. Her co-panelists, professors Michelle DeLair and Marcus Foston, echoed her sentiment: something needs to be done to combat “fast-fashion” — cheap, trendy clothes that are produced quickly.   

The first annual Sustainable Fashion Week took place two weeks ago, from March 28 to April 4. The events spanned everything from a free secondhand clothing bazaar to a repair fair, where students brought in damaged items to learn how to repair them, and even a Project Runway-style fashion show. All of the student-organized events, including the faculty panel, revolved around the idea of making the fashion industry more sustainable. The full week of events was capped by a faculty panel that brought together three professors from across WashU’s schools. 

This set of events came at a critical time, with, as panelists said, fast-fashion taking over much of the industry. The panel’s student moderator cited that nearly 8% of greenhouse gas emissions are produced by the textile industry. While more “slow-fashion” practices, like thrifting and DIY, are gradually returning to mainstream style, social media remains plastered with unboxings of towering piles of Shein packages and influencers’ seemingly infinite wardrobes.   

Ruppert-Stroescu illustrated how the basis of fast-fashion is embedded at the very core of the industry. “Fashion instigates change,” she said. “So whether the garment is made quickly … or if it’s made over a six-month time period, that desire to change and look different — that’s driven by fashion.”

She also noted that fast-fashion is not a new concept, explaining how in Paris, at the beginning of her career, fast-fashion was already a growing norm. “We would have a design, we would make a prototype, we would cut it, we would bring sewing operators and contractors in to sew it, and you know, a week later we had it in our store.” 

“So the phenomenon isn’t different. It’s just the scale of it that has changed,” Ruppert-Stroescu said. 

Part of why the issue is so complicated to tackle is because of the extensive, worldwide supply chain that fuels the industry. DeLair — the Director of Curricular Innovation for the College of Arts & Sciences and a professor of American Culture Studies — teaches several classes on fast-fashion and consumerism. Her curriculum often involves students figuring out the supply chain of an item they want to buy. The exercise illustrates how such information isn’t readily available, regardless of the average consumer’s cognizance of the issue.

“We can look at the prices, like if we go on Shein right now and you look at the prices, and it’s ‘‘Wow, I could buy that for that price,’ and it’s almost a little bit shocking, right? So that can be exciting on one hand,” DeLair said. “But on the flip side, … a lot of students then look at those and they look at the price and they think there is no way you could produce that for and advertise it and ship it here and ship it to me for that price and have that be part of, like a fair system. Like, it just … doesn’t logically make any sense.”

While investing in slow-fashion is costly and can be difficult, there are avenues that can make fast-fashion less environmentally destructive. “There are technologies … we can use,” said Foston, an associate professor at McKelvey who does research on biologically derived materials. But even technological changes may come at a cost to consumers and members of the supply chain. “So the question isn’t explicitly one of technology, but one of cost, and one of the way in which the consumer understands value,” he said.

Because of this, figuring out how to successfully market more sustainably-produced clothing is necessary. As of now, Ruppert-Stroescu worries that sustainably produced clothing is not a priority for most consumers. “I think the top message is going to be what drives that desire,” she said, “I think it’s going to be more about the look. … I think the sustainable message is gonna be secondary.”

The fact that the supply chain is international poses additional complications for this issue. While not a major focus of the panel, the moderator touched on the then-impending tariffs from the Trump administration, noting how it would likely affect the fashion industry.

Even though the industry is worldwide, public policy is an option for mandating sustainability practices in textile industries, despite the costs to suppliers and consumers. In her conversations with industry stakeholders, Ruppert-Stroescu has found that “until the consumers ask for it or policy makers require it, [implementing sustainability] is going to be an uphill battle.”

Despite the intricacies of the issue, all three panelists emphasized how, as consumers, being intentional with purchases does make a bit of a difference. Buying secondhand, investing in higher quality pieces, and avoiding low-quality and polyester based items all help to decrease fashion waste on an individual level.

On the consumer level, Ruppert-Stroescu said she hopes to teach people to keep the desire for novel fashion in check. “I feel like the education piece is teaching people how to have a style, because the difference between style and fashion is you could have a style and it can change, but you’re the driver of that change.”