Construction of silence on issues of sustainability through branding in the fashion market

Abstract

This article focuses on the performativity of fashion brand discourse, in particular the performativity of ‘muted sustainable’ brands and the subsequent construction of eco-fashion consumption. We study brand discourses in the fashion industry that are informed by different theoretical marketing approaches and which perform different consumer capabilities that are valid for recognising, understanding and desiring eco-fashion through the provision of certain coordinates for fashion meanings associated to brands. We question self-sustained brand meaning structures causing structural silence by showing that the influence of theoretically informed brand discourse constructs silence regarding issues of sustainability in the fashion market. Results from a case study of Swedish fashion companies’ communication of their efforts in the sustainability domain as part of their brand management practice are analysed as representing different marketing approaches. The findings elucidate that we can understand silence on issues of sustainability in the fashion market as a separation of norm production and economic exchange that reflects basic assumptions about competition and the meaning of branding in dominant theoretical marketing approaches.

Keywords:

• silence on issues of sustainability
• construction of eco-fashion consumption
• brand governance
• market practice

Notes

¹ The limitations of this study in terms of its relatively small number of cases and the choice of respondents within the studied companies taking part in the study affect our ability to make generalisations (Yin, 2002). The proposed relationships between coordinates of eco-fashion meaning provided by fashion brand discourse and configuration of market practices deserve further scrutiny.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cecilia Solér

Cecilia Solér is senior lecturer in marketing at the School of Business, Economics and Law in Göteborg, Sweden. Her current research in the area of sustainable consumption deals with consumption of novelty in an affluent Western context and BoP consumption in co-operation with IIMB, India. She has published articles on a wide array of topics in the sustainable marketing field; marketing of sustainable food, environmental information in food supply systems and sustainable supply chains. She teaches Sustainable Marketing Management and Consumption and is the coordinator of the master programme in Marketing and Consumption at her school.

Julia Baeza

Julia Baeza and Camilla Svärd, MSc in Marketing and Consumption, graduated in 2012. This article is partly based on empirical data from their master thesis, which was supervised by Cecilia Solér.