Transforming Sustainable Fashion in a Decolonial Context: The Case of Redress in Hong Kong

Abstract

While the Global South is currently the dominant area of fashion production, there are increasing pressures to tackle sustainability issues, including environmental degradation, waste, employment exploitation, negative human impact and excess consumerism directed from the Global North. This article approaches the issue of sustainable fashion from a decolonial perspective focusing on attempts to reverse the mixed messages, counterproductive interventions, and often contradictory efforts to transform garment production and the fashion system into a more sustainable and ethical industry. Based on in-depth interviews with the NGO personnel and a thematic analysis of promotional materials, this case study interrogates Hong Kong based NGO Redress’ social marketing efforts based on events and mediated communication messages and content to promote sustainable fashion practices for producers and consumers in encouraging the reduction of garment and textile waste across the supply and consumption chain. The article evaluates attempts to transform sustainable fashion mind-sets and behaviors in post-colonial Hong Kong with the intention of ascertaining the impact of such approaches when implementing more sustainable practices and in determining their relevance for fashion players in the Global North.

Keywords:

• decolonial fashion
• decentered fashion system
• sustainable fashion
• Hong Kong
• sustainable fashion promotion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anne Peirson-Smith

Anne Peirson-Smith is Assistant Professor at City University of Hong Kong, teaching and researching fashion studies, management and marketing. She has a professional background in creative industries. She is the author of Communicating Transcultural Fashion Narratives (Intellect 2018), The Fashion Business Reader (Bloomsbury/Fairchild 2019) and Planet Cosplay (2019) and associate editor for Journal of Fashion, Style and Popular Culture (Intellect). [email protected]

Jennifer Craik

Jennifer Craik is Professor in Fashion at Queensland University of Technology Brisbane. Her research interests include interdisciplinary approaches to the study of fashion and dress, aspects of cultural studies, cultural policy and arts funding. Her publications include The Face of Fashion (Routledge 1993), Uniforms Exposed: From Conformity to Transgression (Berg Publishers 2005) and Fashion: The Key Concepts (Berg Publishers 2009). [email protected]