Sustainability shouldn’t be an echo chamber
We're missing the opportunity to reach more people — especially men
A month or so ago, I met up with Georgia Graham, a friend of a friend who runs the podcast Threads Of Conversation. Georgia connects with interesting fashion people and chats to them about their life and career through eight pieces of clothing — what piece reminds you of a high? What’s the one piece that got away? — that kinda thing. She’s had ex BoF reporter Lauren Sherman on the show (love her newsletter), as well as Instagram funny guy Raven Smith and Margaret Zhang, former editor in chief of Vogue China.
I get invited onto a lot of podcasts and honestly, it gets pretty tedious answering the same questions over and over again. I always appreciate it when people are interested in what I do, but after talking about the importance of sustainability regulation for the 1,000th time I start to feel a bit like a performing monkey (it is really important though!). So it was so nice to just sit back and chat to Georgia about clothes, which is pretty much my favorite thing to talk about. We also got into how I ended up where I am now, from growing up in England and studying Politics to moving to Berlin, working at Highsnob and doing this whole author/writer/content creator thing. Georgia runs her podcast on Substack (follow her here!) but you can also get it on Spotify.
On Georgia’s Substack post I noticed this comment from one of her followers:
“One thing interesting is that Alec is probably one of the rare male fashion writers talking in-depth about his relationship with clothes and the industry producing it. There is no one on the top of my head I can't think of. I am saying this because, even though overcompsumtion is not gendered, it always feels like the people targeted or adressed to are mostly women.”
I’ve always had a feeling that my following skews female, even though I come from menswear and have only ever covered women’s from a sustainability angle. And it’s the same with all the panel talks and conferences that I go to — there’s fewer guys attending, and those that do tend to come from the tech and manufacturing side. I checked my stats on Instagram and it turns out that 66% of my following there is female. Two thirds! I’m not sure why sustainability skews so female (I’ve got a few ideas but also IDK, ask an anthropologist) but it got me thinking about how the space feels like an echo chamber, even after decades of progress.
As an industry, fashion is the biggest it’s ever been, and it’s not like we’re short on evidence that it’s bad for the planet. But even so, research shows again and again that sustainability is just not a top priority for shoppers (style, price and fit come first).
So much of the energy in sustainability gets directed at the Sheins, H&Ms and Zaras of this world, which makes sense — fast fashion sucks, and we should absolutely be talking about it. But the industry is so much bigger than that, and as we’ve seen from the recent Loro Piana scandal, even luxury houses have skeletons in the closet. So yes, boycott fast fashion, but what about the people shopping at Nordstrom and the guys lining up outside Aime Leon Dore? How do we reach them?
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