Characteristics Of The Fashion Industry

Change and novelty are two of the characteristics that fashion encompasses, according to Kawamura (2005). It can be argued that, to please the needs of constant novelty of postmodern society, the manufacturing of clothing has become faster, cheaper and the fashion industry has become an significant economic player. ‘The production and consumption of fashion has represent the two extremes of a vert long, fragmented and complex supply chain that transforms fibre into yarns and fabrics, which is mediated by designers, manufacturers and buyers into the clothing an offer at retail’ (Black, 2014 P.11). Therefore the process of creating the final product in fashion is a collective activity that requires a large number of employees that are spread

‘This type of eco-fashion, embracing fabrics such as hemp and natural dyeing, can still be seen in the modern incarnation of ‘new-age traveller’ communities and other alternative lifestyles’ (Black, 2011: p.19). In the 1990s, commercial fashion started a new wave of eco-fashion, Fletcher (2010) explains. ‘Pioneering companies including Esprit, Katharine Hamnett, Patagonia, and Conscious Earthwear questioned the environmental standards and ethics of the textile and fashion industries and found systemic problems with the business of clothing manufacture’ (Fletcher, 2011). Fletcher also mentions the American company Esprit, that launched in 1994 a line only with ecological clothing, the Ecollection, that used sustainable materials and covered the ethics of

It is inspired by the ‘farm from table’, a movement that understands and deeply analysis the sources from where the food comes from. In postmodern society, as said by Hines (2011), the food supply chain is global and gives us access to many products that used to not be available locally at the times we wanted them. ‘Tomatoes are on our supermarket shelves winter and summer; apples, pears, grapes, bananas too [...] Food now travel around the world to be in a store near you and at a price you can afford’ (Hines,2011: p. 350) . To encourage local farmers to grow seasonal food and commercialize them locally, the ‘farm from table’ movement started in 2013 in New York City, and “existing suppliers appreciated the sense of security that engendered, and it gave others the courage to plant their own farms” (The Entrepeneur, 2011). As a result, the products travel short distances and are mostly organic. ‘Increasing distances travelled by goods reaching their market destination consume energy and damage the environment’ (Hines, 2011: p. 351). Therefore, ‘farm from table’ produces vegetables, fruits and seeds that are cultivated using methods that minimizes the impacts on the environment and are not harmful for our health, due to the fact that they do not contain any pesticides. Dairy and meat are produced in free range farms, where animals are not confined in an enclosure. Farmers