While I did not take an elective course this week, I did take one at the end of last week, which was called Textile Revolution: Unstitching the Linear. In this course, we were taught about the negative effects of fast fashion and non-sustainable textiles on the world, in economic, climate and ethical terms. The economic element was the key link to my project, which I will discuss below.
Spurred on by late-stage capitalism prevailing in the West, 21st-century clothing has experienced a radical decrease in quality and increase in volume. Each year, the average American buys 68 new items of clothing. Unlike in previous eras, these garments are largely made of synthetic fibres e.g. viscose, acrylic, nylon, petroleum, polyester, acetate, rayon. These textiles can take up to 200 years to decompose and therefore wreak havoc on the environment.
Materials aside, further problems arise in the exploitative labour surrounding our clothing. Clothes for Western consumers are most often sewn by working-class members of developing countries’ societies in sweat-shops. Wages are extremely low at a few pence per garment, whilst executives and their shareholders enjoy healthy profit margins. In addition, working conditions are notoriously poor, with employers expected to work illegally long hours with insufficient breaks. Despite this appalling treatment, many workers do not join unions or advocate for better conditions due to a lack of other available jobs. These conditions can be deadly, for example, in the Rana Plaza disaster of 2013 (see image). One such solution to this issue is regenerative design, which promotes the use of sustainable practices (e.g. creative mending) and materials (e.g. flax) in creating clothes.
This relates to my project, as the profit-seeking motives behind both the fashion and AI industries are causing ethical problems in modern society. There are parallels between the need for transparency in the textiles industry and the need for, for example, data transparency: it is difficult to understand the origins of our products, often due to the deliberate disguising of unethical practices by corporate entities.
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Fashion’s regenerative design principles should be applied in AI and more widely in the technology industry, so as to foster a sustainable technological ecosystem which helps societies, rather than damages individuals.
