What to wear and why Your guilt-free guide to sustainable fashion

Many fashion and sustainability experts have chimed in to sound the alarm on how much clothing the world consumes, especially in the form of massively polluting "fast fashion." But none have done it as deftly as Darke in this clear, concise, and compelling guide. Her statistics speak: clothing manufacturing produces 10 percent of carbon emissions and accounts for 10 billion new items per year, and of all those items in closets, we tend to wear only 30 percent. Her 5 Rs are detailed and focused: Reduce zeroes in on aiming for 74 total items, adding five new and four vintage pieces each year. Regenerate delves into hard looks at regenerative farming of natural materials like wool and silk and future fabrics. Recycle, Restore, and Resell advocate for robust use of seamsters, tailors, and resale shops. Darke closes with remedies for countering claims of greenwashing/greenhushing, reminds us of fashion employment possibilities, and proposes easy hacks for individual consumers, remembering the late Vivienne Westwood's words, "Buy less, choose well, make it last."

Journalist Darke (Now We Are 40) contends in this incisive study that fast fashion is "the second-most polluting industry on the planet after the oil and gas industries." Noting that 100 billion items of clothing are manufactured per year, Darke outlines how the fast fashion industry relies on convoluted supply chains that criss-cross the globe (wool farmed on one continent, for example, might be spun in a second and made into a garment on a third, before being shipped to its final destination); contaminates bodies of water with toxic chemicals; and fosters "unsafe working conditions in factories with zero labor laws" and obscenely low wages (in 2022, workers at a Shein factory in Guangzhou, China, were paid a salary of about $18 a day). Instead of giving up shopping altogether, readers are advised to adopt such sustainable practices as thrifting vintage pieces. In the process, they can escape "the grip of brands and fashion editorials... telling you what to wear" and develop a truly individual style. A former fashion editor at Sunday Times Style, the author buttresses her savvy insider's perspective with extensive research, resulting in an account that identifies fast fashion's harms while celebrating clothes as a source of "confidence and self-identity, imagination and fantasy." Fashionistas would do well to check this out. (Sept.)