The sustainable fashion industry is accelerating as consumers start to think more about what they buy and try to lessen the impact of their purchases. Part of the reason for the growing success of sustainable and ethical fashion is social media and its ability to educate, share stories about brands, good and bad, alert consumers to the myriad of choices out there, build communities, and allow People become key influencers as they make their views and style choices known to their peers and the brands they buy from.
Social activism has become a major force for change and has had particularly notable results with regard to sustainability in the fashion industry. To date, Greenpeace’s campaign to detox fashion has attracted more than 400,000 supporters. Greenpeace promoted its campaign primarily through social media with a compelling Japanese anime-style YouTube video. They also encourage fans to sign up to their Facebook page and tweet their support. The campaign has been highly successful with several fashion retailers agreeing to clean up their supply chain, including the world’s largest fashion retailer Zara and the world’s largest jeans maker Levi’s. Greenpeace also encouraged people to submit an Instagram photo with the name of the company they’d like to see detoxed next for a chance to star in their next campaign.
Labor Behind the Label is a campaign organization that raises awareness of ethical issues in the fashion industry. It recently called on Adidas to pay US$1.8 million in severance owed to 2,800 workers at its former Indonesian supplier PT Kizone, drawing more than 50,000 supporters. Labor Behind the Label has also promoted a number of other campaigns, including calling on brands to ban sandblasted denim by encouraging supporters to, among other things, post on the brands’ Facebook page with a link to the campaign website. This is not the first time Adidas has encountered a subject of public disagreement expressed through social media. In June 2012, the brand withdrew its shackle trainer when its debut on its Facebook page (before its market launch) sparked comments criticizing the design as a symbol of slavery.
In addition to raising awareness and driving change regarding bad practices in the fashion industry, social media has also become a positive force in spreading news of companies that are doing the right thing, making a difference and have great value. story to tell Social media includes a range of different platforms and networks that are used to help ethical brands tell their stories. YouTube is perhaps the most widely used and for London Fashion Week AW13 a series of ethical fashion videos were broadcast as part of Estethica before being posted on YouTube where they can be viewed, distributed via other social media and posted. in blogs.
The importance of social media to marketers stems from the way it can drive and accelerate social proof. Social proof is how we validate what is the norm by observing the behavior of others. Social media greatly magnifies this process by allowing us access to a much greater number of people to validate ourselves than most people could ever experience in the offline world. The strong online communities of influencers and advocates for sustainable and ethical fashion growing on social media platforms play a key role in this social proof.
Toms Shoes is just one interesting example of an ethical fashion brand that has managed to bridge the gap between the ethical and mainstream fashion market. Behind this success story is perhaps his ability to tell a good story using social media. Their Shoeless Day campaign encouraged users to go shoeless for a day and tweet about their experience using the #shoesless hash tag. They amplified this message by partnering with AOL and asking consumers to help distribute the #shoesless messages to over 1,000,000 before the event date and celebrity retweets provided an additional boost. Tom shoes have also proven popular with fashion bloggers and clothing-sharing websites, but it’s hard to know if this is partly a cause of the effect of their popularity on social media, perhaps a bit of both.
Within the various social media platforms there are communities made up of people interested in a particular topic, however their impact extends far beyond their actual community and the more they interact the more they grow. There are a number of social media communities that are driving change in consumer habits by encouraging fashionistas to make and repair, recycle, and wear secondhand and vintage clothing. This, along with a move away from trend-driven looks toward individual style statements, is helping to change what’s considered cool. Street style photography, fashion blogs and outfit sharing websites help inspire rather than dictate how people should dress and have helped bring about a democratization of fashion where consumers have more choice and access to many more brands than available on the high street. Even the concept of buying less is becoming a topic of much discussion on social media, as bloggers are challenged to look stylish for a week, a month, or even a year simply by wearing limited items or not buying anything new. . Perhaps one of the best known of these challenges is the Uniform Project, where a girl pledged to wear a little black dress for 365 days as an exercise in sustainable fashion, but there have been many more. Labor Behind the Label also runs a challenge called the Six Elements Challenge to help raise funds and awareness of issues surrounding ethical practices in the fashion industry.
As the world of social media and fashion 2.0 continues to expand and develop, so will the ways in which we discover, share, learn about and consume fashion. Hopefully, social media will continue to empower consumers, allowing fashion-conscious people to embrace both style and sustainability and for brands to find new models of working that ensure they are practicing and communicating their ethos in the most effective way. . Social media has opened up communication and this can only be a good thing in terms of increasing transparency and choice in the fashion industry.