Fashion’s Sustainability Transition: Navigating Complex Interactions for a Greener Future

The fashion industry, notorious for its environmental and social impacts, is at a crossroads, transitioning towards sustainability. This complex journey, detailed in our study published in Fashion and Textiles (link to the article), reveals the interplay of forces driving this change. We explore various examples to illuminate the five key interactions within the Multi-level Perspective (MLP) framework, demonstrating how the industry is evolving.

Understanding the MLP Framework in Fashion

The MLP framework dissects the an industry’s transition journey through three levels: landscape (macro), regime (meso), and niche (micro). Each level interacts in unique ways, influencing the industry’s direction towards sustainability.

1. Landscape-Regime Interactions (Landscape to regime): Global trends like digitalization and environmental awareness create pressures on established fashion practices. The increasing consumer demand for sustainable products challenges traditional fast fashion models, urging companies to adopt more eco-friendly and ethical practices​​.
2. Regime-Landscape Interactions (Regime to landscape): Major fashion brands can influence broader trends through strategic initiatives. For example, collaborations between different regime players can shape public perceptions of sustainability, gradually altering the landscape towards more responsible practices​​.
3. Landscape-Niche Interactions (Landscape to niche): The rise of environmental and social consciousness has spurred the growth of sustainable niches within the industry. These niches, driven primarily by sustainability logic, challenge the traditional market logic, proposing innovative solutions and business models​​.
4. Niche-Landscape Interactions (Niche to landscape): Positive impact niche players, like sustainable fashion startups, are emerging to challenge the fast-fashion regime with novel business models. They align with sustainability logic, offering alternatives that resonate with changing consumer preferences and environmental needs​​. However, we must be mindful of negative impact niche players too, like some ultra fast fashion players that already started to create change at regime level.
5. Regime-Niche Interactions (Coopetitive — a paradoxical stance that combines competition and cooperation): The relationship between established fashion companies (regime) and innovative startups (niche) can be described as ‘coopetitive.’

Conclusion: Navigating the Complex Terrain of Fashion’s Sustainable Transition

The journey towards a sustainable fashion industry is multifaceted as demonstrated by the interactions highlighted above. This transition spans from sweeping global trends to niche innovations, with each element playing a pivotal role in sculpting the industry’s evolution.

However, it’s crucial to recognize that this transition isn’t uniformly progressing towards sustainability. The rise of ultra-fast fashion, with its aggressive and competitive strategies aimed at reducing costs and captivating younger audiences, signals a potential shift in the industry’s regime. This development highlights that transitions don’t always veer towards sustainable alternatives.

For the textile and fashion industry to truly embrace sustainability, a multilevel approach is necessary. It involves championing social and environmental justice, cultivating cooperative relationships, and moving beyond legitimizing sustainable practices. Equally important is the active delegitimization of unsustainable practices, spotlighting those negative transition pathways that threaten progress. Only through such a comprehensive approach can the industry achieve a genuinely sustainable transformation, one that reconciles economic viability with environmental integrity and social responsibility.