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• 16 September 2022

How fast fashion can cut its staggering environmental impact

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Fast fashion results in new lines being added every week — instead of four times a year — most of which goes to landfill. Credit: Eve Edelheit/Bloomberg/Getty

Clothes were once used until they fell apart — repaired and patched to be re-used, ending their lives as dishcloths and oil rags. Not today. In high-income countries in particular, clothing, footwear and upholstered furniture are increasingly frequently bought, discarded and replaced with new fashions, which are themselves soon discarded and replaced.

The proof is there in the data. In 1995, the textiles industry produced 7.6 kilograms of fibre per person on the planet. By 2018, this had nearly doubled to 13.8 kilograms per person — during which time the world’s population also increased, from 5.7 billion to 7.6 billion people. More than 60 million tonnes of clothing is now bought every year, a figure that is expected to rise still further, to around 100 million tonnes, by 2030.

‘Fast fashion’ is so called partly because the fashion industry now releases new lines every week, when historically this happened four times a year. Today, fashion brands produce almost twice the amount of clothing that they did in 2000, most of it made in China and other middle-income countries such as Turkey, Vietnam and Bangladesh. Worldwide, 300 million people are employed by the industry.

But incredibly, more than 50 billion garments are discarded within a year of being made, according to a report from an expert workshop convened by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), published in May.

Landmark treaty on plastic pollution must put scientific evidence front and centre

Textiles fit into two broad categories: natural and synthetic. The production of those such as cotton and wool, which are made from plant and animal sources, is largely stable, albeit slowly increasing. By contrast, the production of polymer-based fibres, particularly polyester, raced ahead from about 25 million tonnes a year in 2000 to some 65 million tonnes in 2018, according to the NIST workshop report. Taken together, these trends are having a staggering environmental impact.

Take water. The fashion industry, one of the world’s largest users of water, consumes anywhere from 20 trillion to 200 trillion litres every year. Then there are microplastics. Plastic fibres are released when we wash polyester and other polymer-based textiles, and make up between 20% and 35% of the microplastics choking the oceans. Added to this are specific chemicals, such as those used to make fabrics stain resistant and the pesticides required to protect crops such as cotton.

Change is sorely needed, but will require the fashion industry to work harder to embrace more of what is known as the circular economy. That will involve at least two things: refocusing on making things that last, and so encouraging reuse; and more rapidly expanding the technologies for sustainable manufacturing processes, especially recycling. There’s a big role for research — both academic and industrial — in achieving these and other ambitions.

Researchers could begin by helping to provide more accurate estimates of water use. It must surely be possible to narrow the range between 20 trillion and 200 trillion litres of water. There is also work to be done on improving and expanding textiles recycling. Overwhelmingly, used textiles go to landfill (in the United States, the proportion is around 85%), in part because there are relatively few systems (at scale) that collect, recycle and reuse materials. Such recycling requires the manual separation of fibres, as well as buttons and zips. Different fibres are not easy to identify by eye, and overall such manual processes are time-consuming. Machinery is being developed that can help. Technologies also exist to recycle used fibres chemically and to create high-quality fibres that can be reused in clothing. But these are nowhere near the scale needed.

Another challenge for researchers is to work out how to get consumers and manufacturers to change their behaviour. This is already an active area of study in the social and behavioural sciences. For example, Verena Tiefenbeck at Bonn University in Germany and her colleagues found that when hotel guests were shown real-time feedback on the energy used in taking a shower, it cut down energy consumption from showering by 11.4% 1 . Other research questions include finding ways to encourage people to purchase durable goods; exploring how to satisfy cravings for something new while reducing environmental impact; and understanding why certain interventions can be successfully scaled up whereas others fail.

The environmental price of fast fashion

Industry and academia could also collaborate to establish a system to track textile microplastics. This could be done digitally, for example. It would require an agreed definition of what constitutes textile microplastics, such as their material composition and dimensions. Companies, universities, campaigners and governments also need to consider how to make their technologies more accessible. Doing so would accelerate development and testing, and (eventually) adoption at scale.

There are also schemes in other fields that could be a source of ideas. The World Health Organization has considerable experience where accessibility is concerned, for example, in its Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator . Through this, companies and governments agree the principles of sharing key technologies in diagnostics and drug development. And in the early 2000s, the Rockefeller Foundation, under its then-president Gordon Conway, an ecologist now at Imperial College London, made a big push to encourage companies to share technologies in agricultural biotechnology, by establishing the African Agricultural Technology Foundation . These schemes are not perfect and are continually evolving, but offer ideas and lessons that should be studied and considered.

In the meantime, campaign groups are doing much of the heavy lifting with industry. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a UK-based charity that promotes circular-economy solutions, is in the second iteration of a campaign called the Jeans Redesign, which challenges clothing manufacturers to come up with circular solutions to that stalwart of every wardrobe. Some manufacturers have made their jeans-production process more circular by using organic cotton, and by inserting zips in a way that allows them to be easily removed when clothes are recycled. Others are using reinforced stitching to make their products last longer. These are important proofs of principle, but such techniques need to become mainstream.

These actions come at a cost and challenge the idea of fast fashion, because they could make items less affordable to consumers looking to keep up with latest trends. Brands and retailers take a serious view on risks to their bottom line (and might choose to delay action on sustainability as a result). This is why government action is key.

Policies need precision and teeth, which current ones do not always have, and should, ideally, be coordinated. A recommendation from the European Union for member states, for example, says that by 2030 there need to be “mandatory minimums for the inclusion of recycled fibers in textiles, making them longer-lasting, and easier to repair and recycle”. This is too vague. Without more specific targets it will be very difficult to track for compliance purposes. China, the world’s largest textiles producer, also has a five-year circular-economy plan for the industry. Considering fast fashion’s interconnectedness, China and the EU, together with the United States and others, must try harder to coordinate their efforts.

Small steps are good, but big changes are needed. There’s no time to waste when it comes to changing textiles manufacture and design. The shameful environmental cost of a whizzy new wardrobe needs to be tackled immediately, at scale, with style and panache.

Nature 609 , 653-654 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-02914-2

Tiefenbeck, V., Wörner, A., Schöb, S., Fleisch, E. & Staake, T. Nature Energ . 4 , 35–41 (2019).

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Making Fashion Sustainable: Waste and Collective Responsibility

Debbie moorhouse.

1 Department of Fashion & Textiles, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK

Fashion is a growing industry, but the demand for cheap, fast fashion has a high environmental footprint. Some brands lead the way by innovating to reduce waste, improve recycling, and encourage upcycling. But if we are to make fashion more sustainable, consumers and industry must work together.

As the demand for apparel and shoes has increased worldwide, the fashion industry has experienced substantial growth. In the last 15 years, clothing production has doubled, accounting for 60% of all textile production. 1 One particular trend driving this increase is the emergence of fast fashion. The newest trends in celebrity culture and bespoke fashion shows rapidly become available from affordable retailers. In recent years, a designer’s fashion calendar can consist of up to five collections per year, and in the mass-produced market, new stock is being produced every 2 weeks. As with many commodities today, mass production and consumption are often accompanied by mass wastage, and fashion is no different.

In fashion, trends rapidly change, and a drive to buy the latest style can leave many items with a short lifespan and consigned to the waste bin. Given that 73% of clothing ends up in landfills and less than 1% is recycled into new clothing, there are significant costs with regard to not only irreplaceable resources but also the economy via landfilling clothing. At present, it is estimated that £140 million worth of clothing is sent to landfills in the UK each year. 2 Although a significant proportion of recycled fibers are downgraded into insulation materials, industrial wipes, and stuffing, they still constitute only 12% of total discarded material.

The world is increasingly worried about the environmental and social costs of fashion, particularly items that have short lifespans. Mass-produced fashion is often manufactured where labor is cheap, but working conditions can be poor. Sweatshops can even be found in countries with stricter regulations. The transport of products from places of manufacture to points of sale contributes to the textile industry’s rising carbon footprint; 1.2 billion metric tons of CO 2 were reportedly emitted in 2015. 1 Textile dyeing and finishing are thought to contribute to 20% of the world’s water pollution, 3 and microfiber emission during washing amounts to half a million metric tons of plastic pollution annually. 4 Fashion’s water footprint is particularly problematic. Water is used throughout clothing production, including in the growth of crops such as cotton and in the weaving, manufacturing, washing, and dyeing processes. The production of denim apparel alone uses over 5,000 L of water 5 for a single pair of jeans. When you add this to consumer overuse of water, chemicals, and energy in the laundry process and the ultimate discard to landfills or incineration, the environmental impact becomes extremely high.

As demand for fast fashion continues to grow, so too does the industry’s environmental footprint. Negative impacts are starkly evidenced throughout the entire supply chain—from the growth of raw materials to the disposal of scarcely used garments. As awareness of the darker side of fashion grows, so too does demand for change—not just from regulatory bodies and global action groups but also from individual consumers. People want ethical garments. Sustainability and style. But achieving this is complicated.

Demand for Sustainable Fashion

Historically, sustainable brands were sought by a smaller consumer base and were typically part of the stereotype “hippy” style. But in recent years, sustainable fashion has become more mainstream among both designers and consumers, and the aesthetic appeal has evolved to become more desirable to a wider audience. As a result, the consumer need not only buy into the ethics of the brand but also purchase a desirable, contemporary garment.

But the difficulty for the fashion industry lies in addressing all sustainability and ethical issues while remaining economically sustainable and future facing. Sustainable and ethical brands must take into account fairer wages, better working conditions, more sustainably produced materials, and a construction quality that is built for longevity, all of which ultimately increase the cost of the final product. The consumer often wrestles with many different considerations when making a purchase; some of these conflict with each other and can lead the consumer to prioritize the monetary cost.

Many buyers who place sustainability over fashion but cannot afford the higher cost of sustainable garments will often forsake the latest styles and trends to buy second hand. However, fashion and second-hand clothing need not be mutually exclusive, as can be seen by the growing trend of acquiring luxury vintage pieces. Vintage clothing is in direct contrast to the whole idea of “fast fashion” and is sought after as a way to express individuality with the added value of saving something precious from landfills. Where vintage might have once been purchased at an exclusive auction, now many online sources trade in vintage pieces. Celebrities, fashion influencers, and designers have all bought into this vintage trend, making it a very desirable pre-owned, pre-loved purchase. 6 In effect, the consumer mindset is changing such that vintage clothing (as a timeless, more considered purchase) is more desirable than new products because of its uniqueness, a virtue that stands against the standardization of mass-market production.

Making Fashion Circular

In an ideal system, the life cycle of a garment would be a series of circles such that the garment would continually move to the next life—redesigned, reinvented, and never discarded—eliminating the concept of waste. Although vintage is growing in popularity, this is only one component of a circular fashion industry, and the reality is that the linear system of “take, make, dispose,” with all its ethical and environmental problems, continues to persist.

Achieving sustainability in the production of garments represents a huge and complex challenge. It is often quoted that “more than 80% of the environmental impact of a product is determined at the design stage,” 7 meaning that designers are now being looked upon to solve the problem. But the responsibility should not solely lie with the designer; it should involve all stakeholders along the supply chain. Designers develop the concept, but the fashion industry also involves pattern cutters and garment technologists, as well as the manufacturers: both producers of textiles and factories where garment construction takes place. And finally, the consumer should not only dispose, reuse, or upcycle garments appropriately but also wash and care for the garment in a way that both is sustainable and ensures longevity of the item. These stakeholders must all work together to achieve a more sustainable supply chain.

The challenge of sustainability is particularly pertinent to denim, which, as already mentioned, is one of the more problematic fashion items. Traditionally an expression of individualism and freedom, denim jeans are produced globally at 1.7 billion pairs per year 8 through mass-market channels and mid-tier and premium designer levels, and this is set to rise. In the face of growing demand, some denim specialists are looking for ways to make their products more sustainable.

Reuse and recycling can play a role here, and designers and brands such as Levi Strauss & Co. and Mud Jeans are taking responsibility for the future life of their garments. They are offering take-back services, mending services, and possibilities for recycling to new fibers at end of life. Many brands have likewise embraced vintage fashion. Levi’s “Authorized Vintage” line, which includes upcycled, pre-worn vintage pieces, not only exemplifies conscious consumption but also makes this vintage trend more sought after by the consumer because of its iconic status. All material is sourced from the company’s own archive, and all redesigns “are a chance to relive our treasured history.” 9

Mud Jeans in particular is working toward a circular business model by taking a more considered, “seasonless” approach to their collections by instead focusing on longevity and pieces that transcend seasons. In addition, they offer a lease service where jeans can be returned for a different style and a return service at end of life for recycling into new fiber. The different elements that make up a garment, such as the base fabrics (denim in the case of Mud jeans) and fastenings, are limited so the company can avoid overstocking and reduce deadstock. 10 This model of keeping base materials to a minimum has been adopted by brands that don’t specialize in denim, such as Adidas’s production of a recyclable trainer made from virgin thermoplastic polyurethane. 11 The challenge with garments, as with footwear, is that they are made up of many different materials that are difficult to separate and sort for recycling. These business models have a long way to go to be truly circular, but some companies are paving the way forward, and their transparency is highly valuable to other companies that wish to follow suit.

Once a product is purchased, its future is in the hands of the consumer, and not all are aware of the recycling options available to them or that how they care for their garments can have environmental impacts. Companies are helping to inform them. In 2009, Levi Strauss & Co. introduced “Care Tag for Our Planet,” which gives straightforward washing instructions to save water and energy and guidance on how to donate the garment when it is no longer needed. Mud Jeans follows a similar process by highlighting the need to break the habit of regular unnecessary washing and even suggesting “air washing.” 10

At the same time, designers are moving away from the traditional seasonal production cycle and into a more seasonless calendar. In light of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, Gucci’s creative director, Alessandro Michele, has announced (May 2020) that the Italian brand will end the traditional five fashion shows per year and will “hold shows just twice a year instead to reduce waste.” 12 This is a brave decision because it goes against the practice whereby designers were pressured for decades to produce more collections per year, but the hope is that it will be quickly followed by more brands and designers.

Transparency

The discussion around sustainable fashion practices has led to a growing demand from consumers for transparency in the supply chain and life cycle of fashion garments. Consumers want to be informed. They are skeptical of media hype and “greenwashing” by fast-fashion companies wanting to make their brand appear responsible. They want to know the origin of the product and its environmental and social impact.

Some companies are responding by seeking a better understanding of the environmental impacts of their products. In 2015, denim specializer Levi Strauss & Co. extensively analyzed the garment life cycle to consider the environmental impact of a core set of products from its range. The areas highlighted for greatest water usage and negative environmental impact were textile production and consumer laundry care; the consumer phase alone consumed 37% of energy, 13 fiber and textile production accounted for 36% of energy usage, and the remaining 27% was spent on garment production, transport, logistics, and packaging. 14 This life-cycle analysis has led to innovation in waterless finishing processes that use 96% less water than traditional fabric finishing. 15 As noted previously, transparency here also inspires the wider industry to do likewise. Other companies have also introduced dyeing processes that need much less water, and much work is focused on improving textile recycling.

But this discussion does not just apply to production. Some high-street brands are using a “take back” scheme whereby customers are invited to bring back unwanted clothing either for a discount on future purchases or as a way to offload unwanted items of clothing. Not only might this encourage consumers to buy more without feeling guilty, but the ultimate destination of these returned garments can also be unclear. Without further transparency, a consumer cannot make fully informed decisions about the end-of-life fate of their garments.

Collective Responsibility

The buck should not be passed when it comes to sustainability; it is about collective responsibility. Professionals in the fashion industry often feel that it is in the hands of the consumer—they have the buying power, and their choices determine how the industry reacts. One train of thought is that the consumer needs to buy less and that the fashion retail industry can’t be asked to sell less. However, if a sustainable life cycle is to be achieved, stakeholders within the cycle must also be accountable, and there are growing demands for the fashion industry to be regulated.

With the global demand for new clothing, there is an urgent need to discover new materials and to find new markets for used clothing. At present, garments that last longer reduce production and processing impacts, and designers and brands can make efforts in the reuse and recycling of clothing. But environmental impact will remain high if large quantities of new clothing continue to be bought.

If we want a future sustainable fashion industry, both consumers and industry professionals must engage. Although greater transparency and sustainability are being pursued and certain brands are leading the way, the overconsumption of clothing is so established in society that it is difficult to say how this can be reversed or slowed. Moreover, millions of livelihoods depend on this constant cycle of fashion production. Methods in the recycling, upcycling, reuse, and remanufacture of apparel and textiles are short-term gains, and the real impact will come from creating new circular business models that account for the life cycle of a garment and design in the initial concept. If we want to maximize the value from each item of clothing, giving them second, third, and fourth lives is essential.

Acknowledgments

Thank you for support, in writing this Commentary, to Dr. Rina Arya, Professor of Visual Culture and Theory at the School of Art, Design, and Architecture of the University of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK.

Declaration of Interests

The author is the co-founder of the International Society for Sustainable Fashion.

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Research Article

Eco-friendly fashion among generation Z: Mixed-methods study on price value image, customer fulfillment, and pro-environmental behavior

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Youth Lab for Social Innovation, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Project administration, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations Youth Lab for Social Innovation, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Department of Business, Minerva University, San Francisco, California, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft

Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft

• Khoa Tran, 
• Tuyet Nguyen, 
• Yen Tran, 
• Anh Nguyen, 
• Khang Luu, 

• Published: August 16, 2022
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272789
• Peer Review
• Reader Comments

Raising environmental awareness and product development are two separate and costly investments that many small and medium-sized fashion businesses cannot afford to achieve sustainability. Therefore, there is a need to determine which factors exert a more significant impact on consumer loyalty and purchase intention toward eco-friendly fashions. Thus, this study employs a mixed-methods approach with thematic analysis and the SEM-PLS technique to research how Vietnamese Gen Z’s perceptions of product-service quality, environmental awareness, and pro-environmental behavior influence their purchase intention and loyalty toward eco-friendly fashion products. Most interviewees acknowledged that they primarily gained knowledge about eco-friendly fashion through social media platforms. The qualitative results further showed that their knowledge of and attitudes toward eco-friendly fashion practices were insufficient to convince young customers to afford eco-friendly fashion products. The SEM-PLS results of 313 participants show that while customers’ perceived behavioral control plays a more significant role in stimulating purchase intention, only product-service quality factors impact loyalty. Hence, this study suggests that businesses should prioritize improving service and product quality rather than funding green marketing when targeting Vietnamese Gen Z in case of financial constraints. Government should prioritize financial and technological support for fashion firms to develop high-quality eco-friendly fashion to ensure the product availability.

Citation: Tran K, Nguyen T, Tran Y, Nguyen A, Luu K, Nguyen Y (2022) Eco-friendly fashion among generation Z: Mixed-methods study on price value image, customer fulfillment, and pro-environmental behavior. PLoS ONE 17(8): e0272789. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272789

Editor: Maurizio Naldi, LUMSA: Libera Universita Maria Santissima Assunta, ITALY

Received: November 19, 2021; Accepted: July 26, 2022; Published: August 16, 2022

Copyright: © 2022 Tran et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: The de-identifiable data of the qualitative section for thematic analysis and the quantitative data for SEM-PLS analysis are available publicly without restriction at: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.17021879.v3 . The authors want to inform that one interviewee does not agree to record and transcribe their session; hence, only 23 transcription files are available. The original language of the qualitative data is Vietnamese.

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

1. sustainability in fashion.

Sustainability is commonly referred to as a development that fulfills current demands and simultaneously ensures the capabilities of future generations to satisfy their needs [ 1 ]. This concept aims to guarantee intergenerational resource security. Within businesses, this philosophy is also applied to indicate the capacity of companies to address their present financial objectives without jeopardizing incentives to achieve their goals in the long run [ 2 ]. However, current global clothing manufacturing is not sustainable. For instance, cotton cultivation requires high water intensity and insecticides whereas polyester, a synthetic material, is produced from unstainable oil [ 3 , 4 ]. Manufacturers also discharge untreated dye effluents into local water systems. The consequences include higher concentrations of toxicants and heavy metals in the water body and harm to the health of aquatic animals and nearby residents [ 5 ]. Furthermore, the rise in fashion purchases has resulted in a new phenomenon of disposing of garments to follow new fashion trends despite the quality and durability of products. This large amount of textile waste results in substantial environmental degradation.

In contrast, eco-friendly or green fashion refers to clothing and accessories produced with minimal chemicals, pesticides, or toxic pigments which significantly lower the ecological footprint. Hence, sustainable fashion is in high demand to protect the environment in the long term. Businesses worldwide have integrated sustainability aspects in their fashion products and gained different benefits in return. For instance, Kotn, a Canadian fashion brand that specializes in sustainable fashion, received customer support and quickly expanded its market into an international one because of its eco-friendly nature. More precisely, since it was first introduced in 2015, the brand has achieved an average of 37% month-over-month growth [ 6 ]. Another example is Patagonia, a fashion business with a mission to promote eco-friendly fashion. With its environmental campaigns, the annual sales of $1 billion have made this company a large corporation [ 7 ]. Owing to the increased availability and options to purchase eco-friendly fashion, consumers are also becoming familiar with products having elements of recycling, second-hand and natural fiber materials, and environmentally friendly fabrics [ 8 , 9 ]. However, the achievements of Kohn and Patagonia are outliers rather than illustrating the success of the industry.

Scholars have shown the need for collaboration between suppliers and consumers to promote eco-friendly fashions. More specifically, despite consumer awareness and advocacy toward environmental measures, their actions generally do not reflect their knowledge and attitudes [ 10 ]. Additionally, recent studies have recognized the lack of research on how after-sales fulfillment and price value image influence people’s decisions to buy eco-fashion products and their repurchase intentions as the literature tends to examine customers’ environmental concerns and knowledge as a factor rather than customers’ perceived satisfaction with product and service quality [ 11 ]. In short, they concentrated only on the promotional elements of the marketing mix (4P). Therefore, rather than only investigating environmental concerns, environmental awareness and perception as in previous Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) studies [ 12 ], the literature needs to adopt a second set of constructs illustrating the product & service qualities and price value of eco-friendly fashion products, addressing the two additional marketing elements (Product and Price). From a practical perspective, rising environmental awareness and product development are two separate and costly investments that many small and medium-sized businesses cannot afford. Therefore, the literature gap motivates researchers to determine which factors have a stronger impact on consumer loyalty and purchase intention toward eco-friendly fashion: consumers’ understanding of environmental preservation or the development of quality eco-friendly products and services? This research question provides the foundation for constructing a conceptual framework and research hypotheses.

2. Vietnamese fashion industry and generation Z’s attitudes

Vietnam is an important context for eco-friendly studies because failure to pursue eco-friendly practices affects millions of workers in the domestic market and hinders the global supply chain. From a domestic perspective, the garment and textile industry is one of the key industries in Vietnam, accounting for the country’s second-largest export turnover and contributing 16 percent of the total GDP in 2019 [ 13 ]. Simultaneously, the textile and garment industry employs over 1.6 million people, more than 12% of the industrial workforce, and almost 5%, of the total labor force in the country [ 14 ]. However, the textile industry faces various environmental issues [ 15 ]. Chemical processing, such as dyeing and printing, accounts for 20% of Vietnamese water pollution [ 16 ]. Hence, Vietnam is facing a trade-off between economic development and the environment, long-term health, and social well-being. In addition, as foreign importers and global fashion firms have raised their higher standards of sustainability in fashion production, failure to comply with green production would result in the loss of jobs for millions of citizens and multi-billion dollars in GDP [ 15 , 16 ]. From the international perspective, according to the World Trade Organization, Vietnam ranked top three global apparel exporters in 2020 [ 17 ]. Therefore, while the peer-reviewed research on the Vietnamese fashion and garment industry is still limited, various international media and international corporate reports have highlighted the significance of Vietnam in the global supply chain. A halt in Vietnamese garment manufacturing due to environmental concerns could disrupt the global supply chain [ 15 ].

Understanding both domestic and international significance, various Vietnamese scholars have proposed legislative solutions, technological solutions, and sustainable business practices. Additionally, previous studies have suggested that customers’ attitudes, cultural value, and long-term orientation (LTO) impacts their purchase intention toward green products [ 18 , 19 ]. Since Vietnamese consumers follow a collectivistic culture [ 20 ], it is predicted that Vietnamese consumers are more likely to adopt green consumption. Vietnamese businesses are also familiar to the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) marketing, focusing on social and environmental issues when they do on profits: “Fashion and textiles produced by sustainable practices can alleviate the ecological and social strains, and provide an ethical choice for sustainable-conscious consumers to buy sustainable products”[ 16 ]. However, the sales of sustainable fashion firms did not show such welcoming adoption. Not many entrepreneurs have successfully survived and scaled up eco-friendly fashion firms. Leftover firms provide less attractive designs and styles than their fast fashion counterparts, which creates inconvenience in purchasing and an unfulfilled customer experience [ 21 ]. Therefore, the authors suspect that customers attitudes, knowledge, and behaviour and the current proposed solutions did not fully account for the interaction between the fashion industry and customers, leading to the low adoption of sustainable fashions in Vietnam.

Finally, as Vietnamese startups are still small with limited resources, funding for marketing strategies should be effectively utilized, concentrating on the most potential customer segmentation. In terms of eco-friendly fashion, generation Z (1996 to 2010) customers are particularly relevant because of their fast-growing willingness for sustainability and their value of supporting the environment [ 21 , 22 ]. Members of this generation are educated customers who are well-versed in environmental issues and eco-friendly products. Consequently, they feel that businesses should be obligated to address and remedy environmental and social challenges [ 23 ]. Furthermore, they were willing to contribute by shifting their consumption to environmentally friendly products [ 24 ]. Therefore, they are potential early adopters of Vietnam’s green fashion industry. In the near future, they will become adult parents responsible for purchasing clothing for their young children (succeeding generations such as Generation Alpha) and their old parents, such as Generation Y and X. Meanwhile, prior literature has examined the behavior of consumers toward green apparel in different countries such as Vietnam, China and the United States. However, a few studies emphasized generation Z as the study sample [ 25 , 26 ]. This research also aims to enrich the empirical literature on young consumers in eco-friendly fashion in developing countries. An important trait of sustainability is the consistent adoption of eco-friendly products rather than a purely trial. However, previous studies on Gen Z in Vietnam, India, Thailand, and Korea only have examined perceptions of purchase intention rather than customer loyalty [ 27 , 28 ]. This study takes a further step to explore factors that influence customer loyalty—both quantitatively and qualitatively so that firms can benefit from context-rich data.

With the proposed global literature gaps, such as the lack of research on developing nations and Generation Z and the significant status of Vietnam in the global textile supply chain, the authors of this study chose Vietnam and Generation Z as research contexts and research subjects. We also employed a mixed-methods approach to analyze Vietnamese Generation Z customers’ attitudes towards sustainable fashion, examining the following research questions:

• RQ1: Which factors have a stronger impact on consumer loyalty and purchase intention toward eco-friendly fashion in Vietnam: developing quality eco-friendly products and services or promoting consumers’ understanding of environmental preservation?
• RQ2: From the interviewees’ perspective, how to encourage the consumption of eco-friendly products in Vietnam?

Literature review

Customer fulfillment is defined as the ability of companies or businesses to fulfill customer orders or requests with good interaction and customer support, on-time delivery, and after-sale services. This factor has been useful to companies and has greatly affected customer satisfaction since the early 1990s [ 29 ]. Therefore, customer fulfilment has received attention from companies in North America, Western Europe, and Japan. Previous studies in Taiwan on the relationship between after-sales services and customer satisfaction have demonstrated that service quality positively influences satisfaction, brand image, and brand loyalty in the fashion industry [ 30 , 31 ]. However, little attention has been paid to how customer fulfillment affects customer satisfaction in Vietnam and to prior research on eco-friendly fashion.

Additionally, price value image is the customer’s perceived value of a product in terms of quality and satisfaction regarding its price. In Taiwan and Fiji, two studies show that price value image significantly impacts customers’ intention to purchase smartwatches and supermarkets’ customer satisfaction, respectively [ 30 , 32 ]. With regard to eco-friendly fashion products, PVI has been shown to affect customer satisfaction. One study in the context of the UK has shown patterns in the effects of price and qualities received on sustainable fashion use: while priced highly, sustainable fashion is perceived to have sufficiently higher quality, fewer health problems on the skin than other fashion, and as such, customers “see sustainable clothing as a net positive value alternative” [ 33 ]. As customers perceive eco-friendly fashion products to be premium in terms of both price and quality [ 25 ], the authors of this study believe that developing eco-friendly products would further increase the effect of price value image on customer satisfaction.

Customer satisfaction is the attainment of consumption patterns, showing the level of satisfaction with desires and expectations [ 34 ]. Customer satisfaction is a significant factor in the service sector in all industries because of its impact on business profits and performance improvement [ 35 , 36 ]. Meanwhile, purchase intention refers to the likelihood of purchases made by customers in the future [ 37 ], and previous studies have pinpointed the link between customer satisfaction and purchase intention. One study also showed that when consumers are satisfied with a green product, their purchase intentions and tendencies to build brand loyalty increase in the context of South Korea, China, and Japan [ 38 ]. If the previous sustainable purchasing experience fulfills their expectations and does not negatively affect their health or finances, they have more intention to purchase more sustainable fashion products. However, a recent study found little investigation into the relationship between customer satisfaction and purchase intention toward eco-friendly fashion products in developing countries [ 39 ]. To address the gap in customer fulfillment and examine the correlation between how customer fulfillment and price value image affect customer satisfaction in Vietnam, the following hypotheses are proposed:

• H1: Customer fulfillment significantly impact customer satisfaction
• H2: Price value image significantly impact customer satisfaction
• H3: Customer satisfaction significantly impacts purchase intention

In addition to product and service quality, customer-related factors, such as environmental awareness, financial capacity, and willingness, also contribute to the consumption of eco-friendly fashion. The authors rely on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) theory to investigate customer-related factors. While TRA explores customers’ behavior based on customers’ subjective norms and attitudes, The TPB model adds a new construct, "perceived behavioral control" (PBC), to represent customers’ perception of ease or difficulty in doing the behavior of interest". TPB model is a response to the critics that TRA functions poorly for those with limited volitional control [ 25 ]. Researchers have employed TPB and TRA model because of its high predictability in pro-environment and green apparel research across Vietnam and globally [ 39 , 40 ]. In addition to product and service quality, customer-related factors, such as environmental awareness, financial capacity, and willingness, also contribute to the consumption of eco-friendly fashion. Many studies found that in the initial phase of eco-friendly product purchase, consumers who value the environment can proceed to the stage of information seeking and searching for green items [ 12 ]. Marketers and businesses have relied on these findings to generate favorable attitudes from consumers toward firms’ products through better communication and product image engagement [ 38 , 41 , 42 ].

However, empirical evidence of how consumer-driven factors, including perceived behavioral control and environmental concerns, impact purchase intention shows conflicting results. Many researchers have observed that consumers who are highly concerned about the environment and practice eco-friendly behavior are more likely to purchase green products [ 43 ]. In addition, through Twitter data mining, studies have revealed the factors that influence customers’ purchase behavior for environmentally friendly products, demonstrating a strong relationship between customers’ impression of eco-friendliness and the success of luxury fashion items [ 44 , 45 ]. Thus, environmental concerns and PBC are often considered impetus for purchase and consumption.

On the other hand, in 1998, one paper studied consumers’ apparel consumption practices related to the environment and found that environmental awareness and consciousness do not influence their purchase of apparel products [ 46 ]. However, this study shows that environmentally responsible behavior, a modified construct from PBC, significantly impacts environmentally responsible apparel consumption behavior. In contrast, two studies found that environmental concern significantly impacts the purchasing intention of young Bangladesh toward eco-friendly apparel, but PBC does not [ 45 , 47 ]. Since there are different empirical results on the relationship between environmental concerns and PBC on purchase intention, culture and contexts might influence this relationship. Therefore, there is a need to assess this relationship in Vietnamese eco-fashion. Since the majority of the literature considers a significant positive relationship between these variables, the following hypotheses are proposed:

• H4: Environmental concerns significantly impact purchase intention
• H5: Perceived behavioral control significantly affects purchase intention

We need to understand the determinants of customers’ purchase intention, satisfaction, and loyalties to further promote the conversion from non-sustainable fashion to sustainable fashion consumption. As customers’ loyalties have re-enforcement abilities on one’s behaviors and spread the usage to the networks, mastering the concept of sustainable fashion would directly increase the survival rates and growth of sustainable fashion businesses, making eco-friendly fashion products more available, more quality for society. On the social scale, this contribution would indirectly mitigate pollution issues related to unsustainable fashion.

Numerous previous studies have identified the influence of customer satisfaction and purchase intention on customer loyalty [ 48 – 50 ]. According to [ 51 , 52 ], customer loyalty has been explained as a profound commitment to repurchase or frequently visit a preferred product or service in the future, regardless of the impact of marketing efforts on changing behaviors. Consumers with satisfying experiences from products tend to become loyal customers. Hence they continuously repeat their purchase behavior at that brand, which creates an opportunity for sustainable industry flourishment [ 53 ]. For instance, existing studies in the Korean traditional fashion market have found that customer satisfaction is a significant factor in developing a solid relationship between repurchase decisions and fashion products [ 51 ]. Investigating 1126 local participants from 14 fashion retailers in Bangladesh, one study indicated that a satisfied customer would become loyal [ 53 ]. Research conducted in the Hong Kong fashion retailing industry from 202 customers has also found that product satisfaction positively affects brand preference and repurchase decisions [ 54 ]. However, there are an insufficient number of studies on purchase intentions that impact loyalty to eco-friendly fashion products. Based on the above evidence, the following hypotheses are proposed:

• H6: Customer satisfaction significantly impacts customer loyalty
• H7: Purchase intention significantly impacts customer loyalty

According to one study in South Korea, China, and Japan, environmental concern drives the perceived benefits of consuming sustainable fashion, which leads to purchase and eWOM intention [ 38 ]. Another study conducted in Southern Gauteng, South Africa, with consumers who shopped at different shopping malls has shown that the consciousness of customers’ environmental issues is positively related to their intentions to repurchase eco-friendly retail products [ 55 ]. Research has also stated that when customers find satisfactory eco-friendly products, there is a great likelihood that they will experience them again. Therefore, the following hypotheses were proposed:

• H8: Environmental concerns for fashion production significantly impact customer loyalty.
• H9: Perceived behavioral control significantly impacts customer loyalty.

With the qualitative findings and the literature gap, Fig 1 visualizes the conceptual model and research hypotheses:

• PPT PowerPoint slide
• PNG larger image
• TIFF original image

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272789.g001

Research design: Mixed-method approach

According to the literature, the mixed-methods approach permits researchers to investigate and observe insightful customer behaviors through in-depth interviews [ 56 ]. It also tested these observations with data-driven and rigorous analyses using a larger sample size. Therefore, to understand Vietnamese Gen Z’s attitudes towards sustainable fashion and confirm this conceptual model, the authors employed a mixed-methods approach and separated the research into two phases: qualitative and quantitative. While the study’s qualitative results can generate data-rich suggestions from customers’ perspectives to improve sustainable fashion, the quantitative results test the significance of the relationships and rank how each independent variable affects customers’ purchase intention and customer loyalty. Social enterprises and fashion firms can use this data to navigate their decision-making processes and business strategies.

In the qualitative phase, the authors conducted in-depth and open-ended interviews and thematic analysis to understand the factors that influence Gen Z’s intention to buy sustainable and green fashion products. The authors also followed the COREQ guidelines to depict the transparency and rigor of the data collection and analysis process [ 57 ]. The authors used the interview data from phase 1 to construct a conceptual model for the quantitative phase. In the quantitative phase, the authors designed and distributed a questionnaire to gen Z residents in Vietnam. After participants completed the questionnaire, the authors employed Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyze the relationship between each construct in the model. This phase answers whether the constructs developed from the qualitative phase have a significant impact on customer loyalty and purchase intention in a sustainable fashion context.

Phase 1: Qualitative study

Based on the study about thematic analysis, in-depth and semi-structured interviews allowed the authors to understand the thought process of participants regarding the decision to buy sustainable fashion products [ 58 ]. More specifically, the structured questions aimed to investigate the demands, motivations, and challenges of participants when deciding between sustainable and non-sustainable fashion attire. On the other hand, unstructured sessions allow respondents to share their thoughts about the research topic which might be beyond the expectations of the authors, allowing the enrichment of information and diverse perspectives in this study. The authors further employed thematic analysis techniques to code and organize responses into valuable business suggestions and business constructs.

The interviewers in this phase were K.L, A.N, Y.T and Y.N The team had 1 male (K.L) and three female interviewers, all of whom had previous training in qualitative research and interview processes. Interviewers are currently research assistants in social science and business. They collected data from September 2021 and recruited a sample size of 24 participants via purposive sampling at high schools in Vietnam via social media (Facebook). Table 1 shows the participants’ social demographics. Although the sample was small and unbalanced between male and female customers, this number of participants was suitable for the explorative nature of phenomenological and qualitative research [ 59 ]. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the interviewers met all the participants via Zoom, Google Meet or telephone and each session lasted from 7 minutes to 37 minutes. Moreover, before conducting the interviews, the interviewers sent out a Qualtrics form to collect the participants’ demographic information, aiming to exclude any potential participants who were not born in the generation Z period (1996 to 2010) in accordance with the categorization of the Pew Research Center and younger than 16 years old to comply with the Children Law of Vietnam [ 22 ].

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272789.t001

The interviews were conducted in 3 main sections. In the first section, the interviewers mentioned the research goals and clarified any questions about the technical concepts that might create difficulties for the participants. The participants were welcome to pose any questions about the research, their data privacy, and their rights regarding the study. At the end of this section, the authors collect the written consent from the participants. The authors recorded all interview sessions with written notes and might also audio-tape the interviews whenever the participants were permitted. In the second section, the study follows the question guide (See S1 File ), which is based on the pilot study, TBP, and knowledge-attitude-behaviour theory. In the third section, the interviewers and the participants talk more openly about sustainable fashion in a greater picture. This section allows interviewers to develop new constructs or amend the TPB theory construct to suit the context of sustainable fashion. Finally, the authors apply the member checking method with several participants to ensure that the study interpretation correctly reflects the thoughts of the participants, ensuring the credibility and validation of the analysis [ 60 ].

All authors performed data coding and analysis. While all authors have studied and performed data coding, TN and KT also have publications on qualitative studies. Before conducting the data coding, the authors translated the interview notes from Vietnamese to English using the forward-backward translation method. Finally, the authors followed the thematic analysis steps developed in [ 58 ]. The steps are summarized in Table 2 :

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272789.t002

Phase 2: Quantitative study

The quantitative phase explores whether the relationships between variables in the conceptual model are statistically significant ( Fig 1 ). The analysis also identifies the factors that have the strongest impact on the purchase intention of sustainable fashion products and their impact on customer loyalty. As the existing literature has mentioned the strength of the SEM-PLS technique in exploratory or an extension of an existing structural theory compared to CB-SEM, this research employs the SEM-PLS technique [ 61 ]. Second, this method is useful for the prediction of relationships and is more suitable for theoretical development than other methods, such as CB-SEM. This is important because the current research model is not heavily based on well-established theories. Third, this technique also allows analysis with a small sample size and has no assumptions regarding data distribution [ 61 ]. Finally, as customers’ perceptions are very subjective and there are differences between cultures, this method is rigorous in analysis and easy to replicate in future research in another context.

The questions of the questionnaire were developed based on the theory of previous research while incorporating data from the qualitative stage to contextualize them in a sustainable fashion context. It collects data on 7 variables, environmental concerns for fashion production (Envf), perceived behavioral control (PBC), customer fulfillment (CF), price value image (PVI), purchase intention (PI), customer satisfaction (CS), and customer loyalty (CL). These seven variables have 28 items, and are measured on a seven-point Likert-type scale ranging from “strongly disagree” (1) to “strongly agree” (7) (See Table 4 ). Specifically, 4 items of the Envf construct are based on Gam, H.J.’s theory and our qualitative data [ 62 ]. 4 items on perceived behavioral control and 3 items on purchase intention were adapted from Kim studies [ 63 ]. The authors adapted 4 items on price value image from Zielke’s study [ 64 ] and 5 items on customer satisfaction from Ndubisi [ 65 ], and 5 items on customer loyalty from Yee [ 66 ]. The authors used qualitative results to develop 4 items for customer fulfillment. The researchers also conducted a 30 minute focus group session with two fashion and environmentalist experts to ensure that the translations and adoptions of the items in the questionnaire were understandable, suitable and appropriate to the context of Vietnam and the industry and the validity of the measurement scale. Before distributing the questionnaire, a pilot study was conducted with nine participants to ensure readability and validity.

The authors used convenience and snowball sampling to recruit generation Z residents in Vietnam through a Qualtrics survey. These sampling techniques help researchers target the right participant group and achieve the sample size threshold in a short period of time (August to September 2021) with an affordable budget. We distributed the Qualtrics questionnaire on social media platforms, namely Facebook, on researchers’ accounts in a public setting. We also posted on various Facebook groups in high school and university student communities and young professional communities to recruit more respondents. After cleaning the data, the study had a sample size of 313 participants, as summarized in Table 3 . This sample size is larger than the recommended sample size for conducting the SEM-PLS method according to Soper study [ 67 ]. The authors recognized that the number of female participants was twice the number of male participants; hence, we used MGA-PLS analysis to identify whether the genders of participants were significantly different regarding the relationship of constructs within the proposed model. The results showed no significant difference between male and female participants (Appendix 4).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272789.t003

The PLS analysis followed the procedure developed in Hair study [ 61 ]. First, we calculated the outer model using convergent validity, composite reliability, construct reliability, and discriminant validity. Regarding the inner model assessment, Table 4 shows the values for Cronbach’s alpha (a), composite reliability (CR), and average variance extracted (AVE) and Table 5 shows the Heterotrait-Monotrait ratio. Second, the authors assessed the inner model, namely the testing of collinearity, R-Square (R 2 ) test, size effect test (f 2 ), relevant predictions (Q 2 ), and path coefficients. To analyze the data, the researcher employs the SmartPLS 3.3.3 to calculate the outer model and inner model.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272789.t004

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272789.t005

Qualitative results

After interviewing 24 participants, the qualitative phase generated content-rich data about the interviewees’ level of environmental awareness. Most interviewees reported being aware of eco-friendly fashion products. The primary sources of information about eco-friendly products are social media. Participants mentioned that they knew about eco-friendly products through posts and videos from influencers, environmental projects, and organizations. Some said they read fashion e-newspapers and magazines and gained insight into the term eco-friendly products. In their definition, eco-friendly fashion products are clothes, jewelry, and accessories made from eco-friendly materials and manufactured in an eco-friendly process such as tote bags and tire sandals.

Despite their environmental awareness, only six interviewees used eco-friendly products, while the rest did not. One of the primary reasons for not using this type of product is that they do not have sufficient knowledge to differentiate between normal and eco-friendly products. Because eco-friendly fashion shops do not run marketing campaigns and reveal that these products are eco-friendly when potential customers visit the shop, they do not know this property to buy. In addition, they do not consider environmental factors when purchasing. More than half of the participants said that when they buy clothing, they focus mainly on the quality and design of the product. The materials, diversity of styles, suitability and fit of the product should match their interests and expectations. Since they believe that eco-friendly fashion brands have limited options, they do not intend to visit these shops. In addition, most interviewees reported that they were students, and hence a small budget for shopping. They found that eco-friendly products usually have higher prices than their normal counterparts. Even people who use eco-friendly fashion products consider the costs before other factors when they purchase. Finally, eight interviewees said that the unavailability of eco-friendly products prevented them from consuming. Although they intend to purchase eco-friendly products, they cannot find the shop to buy. Besides, as eco-friendly products are not popular in their areas, finding eco-friendly products is challenging for potential customers.

In terms of factors motivating them to consume eco-friendly products, price, product performance, and service quality mainly determine interviewees’ purchase and repurchase intentions. Sixteen interviewees believe that if their price is reasonable, the same, or just a little higher than normal products, they will consider these products. However, prices also need to satisfy their expectations of product quality. As fabric material, content and stitches will significantly affect the product’s visual, 15 participants suggested that if the product fails to make them feel comfortable, they will not buy them regardless of price. Some interviewees also care about the durability of the products; hence, the patterns and color should maintain the same after a long time of use. Considering patterns, colors, and design style as a tool to boost confidence in front of the public, participants believe that they will prefer eco-friendly products if they deliver diverse options as normal products. Some interviewees were willing to purchase and recommend their friends to buy eco-friendly products with higher prices if they had good quality because they perceived environmental factors as added value. Besides, six interviewees believe that they will repurchase eco-friendly products if they can confirm that the shop does not fake the product’s eco-friendliness. The level of environmental awareness of salespersons and shop owners illustrated in their first visit also affects their repurchase. This is because they can ensure the honesty of the shop, ensuring the eco-friendliness characteristics of products. Service quality also plays a crucial role in repurchase intentions. Young people will revisit the shops if they feel politely welcomed by salespersons at the time of their first purchase. They also feel encouraged if the shops offer sale-off programs and discounts for loyal customers. Overall, perceived product quality and service quality are the two driving forces behind customers’ purchase behavior. The following hypotheses are posited:

• H10: Perceived behavioral control more significantly impacts purchase intention than customer satisfaction and environmental concerns regarding eco-friendly fashion products.
• H11: Customer satisfaction has a greater impact on customer loyalty than perceived behavioral control and environmental concerns regarding eco-friendly fashion products.

Regardless, to encourage people to switch to more eco-friendly alternatives, interviewees recommended that two optimal strategies are educating people about environmental effects and promoting eco-friendly fashion products. First, the interviewees perceived that young people were aware of eco-friendly products. However, they do not comprehensively understand the positive impacts of these products on the environment or the current situation of the unsustainable world of fashion. Therefore, instilling more knowledge and information into people’s minds can automatically turn into environmentally conscious actions. Second, promoting eco-friendly fashion products via social media and influencers’ endorsements will help potential customers remember this product when people are environmentally conscious. One of the main problems is that people do not know places to buy eco-friendly products; thus, the brands should also conduct marketing campaigns to help people feel easy to buy. In this way, customers will feel an increased availability and accessibility of the products.

Quantitative results

Outer model assessment..

The Outer Model Assessment of reflective constructs addresses the indicator reliability, internal consistency reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity of the empirical model in the marketing context. All thresholds in this study followed the guidelines developed in [ 68 ]. After excluding 2 indicators (ENVF4, PBC1) because their loading factor was lower than 0.70. Table 4 shows the assessment of loading factor, Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability, and average variance extracted from six constructs: customer fulfillment, customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, environmental concerns for fashion production, perceived behavioral control, purchase intention, and price value image. According to this table, all constructs have an AVE score from 0.564 to 0.768 (> 0.5), Cronbach’s alpha score from 0.717 to 0.899 (> 0.7), and composite reliability score from 0.835 to 0.930 (> 0.7), satisfying the measurement benchmarks [ 68 ]. Regarding the test for discriminant validity, the Heterotrait-monotrait ratio ( Table 5 ) showed that all values were higher than 0.90, satisfying the benchmark for discriminant validity [ 69 ]. As all measurements meet all benchmarks in the Outer Model Assessment established in the literature, the research moves to the Inner model Assessment.

Inner model assessment.

The Inner Model Assessment examines the Collinearity test, the R-square (R 2 ), The size effect test (f 2 ), the Relevant prediction test (Q 2 ), and the Path analysis of the empirical model [ 68 ]. First, the study examines Collinearity Issues to ensure that there is no bias in the regression results. According to the PLS results in Table 6 , the structural model Collinearity (VIF) has coefficient values ranging from 1,138 to 1,947. As all coefficient values are smaller than the ideal threshold of 3.0, as suggested by Hair, the data show that there are no problems of collinearity [ 68 ].

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272789.t006

Regarding the test for explanatory power, one study remarks that R 2 values from 0.50 to 0.75 show that the endogenous latent variable has moderate predictive power to the model and an R-value smaller than 0.50 shows a weak predictive power to the model [ 68 ]. Regarding the R-square analysis in this study, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and purchase intention have R 2 values of 0.587, 0.542, and 0.486 respectively. This result indicates that while price value image and customer fulfillment can explain 58.7% of customer satisfaction variants, environmental concerns for fashion production, customer satisfaction, purchase intention, and perceived behavioral control can explain 54.2% of customer loyalty variants. These two explanations have a moderate predictive power. On the other hand, customer satisfaction, perceived behavioral control, and environmental concerns for fashion production can only explain 48.6% of purchase intention variants with weak predictive power. In addition to the R 2 test, Hair study states that the relevant prediction test (Q 2 ) also shows the predictive value of the model if Q 2 > 0 [ 68 ]. The Q 2 coefficient value > 0,25 depicts a medium predictive accuracy for the PLS path model, and all constructs in this study meet this threshold. More specifically, customer satisfaction has a Q 2 value of 0.438 and both purchase intention and customer loyalty have a Q 2 value of 0.346. The R 2 and Q 2 results show that the proposed model of this study has moderate predictive values regarding how service quality, product quality, customer satisfaction, customer’s environmental awareness, and perceived behavioral control on purchasing intention and customer loyalty toward sustainable fashion in Vietnam.

After processing the data using 5000 bootstrapped samples, the results support seven hypotheses and reject nine hypotheses at 95% confidence ( Table 6 ). First, the data show that price value image (0.489, P = 0.000) and customer fulfillment (0.361, P = 0.000) show a significant relationship with customer satisfaction; hence, hypotheses 1 and 2 are accepted. Second, customer satisfaction (0.260, P = 0.000), environmental concerns for fashion production (0.184, P = 0.000), and perceived behavioral control (0.456, P = 0.000) significantly affected purchase intention; therefore, the study accepts hypotheses 3, 4, and 5. Finally, while customer satisfaction (0.553, P = 0.000) and purchase intention (0.199, P = 0.000) significantly influenced customer loyalty, the results supported hypotheses 6 and 9. However, environmental concerns for fashion production (0.019, P = 0.630) and perceived behavioral control (0.089, P = 0.087) did not show a significant relationship with customer loyalty. Therefore, this study rejects hypotheses 7 and 8.

Regarding the hypotheses developed after the qualitative phrase, the f 2 test can compare the substantive impacts of each predictor construct on a dependent construct. According to two key studies [ 68 , 70 ], thresholds for the f 2 test, f 2 effect sizes larger than 0.02, 0.15, and 0.35 show small, medium, and large impacts on dependent constructs respectively. The results confirm that perceived behavioral control has a higher impact on purchase intention than customer fulfillment and environmental concerns for fashion production, accepting hypotheses 10. More specifically, only perceived behavioral control has medium-size effects (0.35 > 0.332 > 0.15) on purchase intention while customer satisfaction (0.102 < 0.15) and environmental concerns for fashion production (0.058 < 0.15) only have a small effect. Finally, only customer satisfaction shows a large effect (0.469 > 0.35) on customer loyalty while purchase intention (0.045 < 0.15) only shows a small size effect. Perceived behavioral control (0.010 < 0.02) and environmental concerns for fashion production (0.001 < 0.02) did not significantly affect customer loyalty. This finding aligns with hypothesis 11 that customer satisfaction has a larger impact on customer loyalty than purchase intention, perceived behavioral control, and environmental concerns for fashion production.

Discussions

In a recent study on green apparel, its limitation session questioned whether environmental concern and customer satisfaction can influence the purchase intention of customers in developing countries [ 39 ]. This study confirms that customer satisfaction, environmental concern, and PCB have statistically significant impacts on the purchase intention of the Vietnamese generation Z concerning eco-friendly fashion, addressing the contextual gap. This study also confirms the conflicting nature of customer-driven factors (environmental concerns and PBC) in purchasing intention. As both environmental concerns and PBC significantly influence the purchase intention of eco-friendly fashion in Vietnam, this study only partially supports previous studies of [ 47 , 52 ]. In addition, while recent studies only studied the factors that impact purchase intention of eco-friendly fashion in the younger generation [ 27 , 45 ], our study takes further steps to explore which factors influence customer loyalty and compares the importance of each factor on purchase intention and customer loyalty with the f square test. This mixed-method result and the comparison of effect sizes provide important theoretical and practical implications for sustainable eco-fashion.

Quantitative analysis shows that while PBC has a moderate effect on purchase intention; environmental concern and customer satisfaction have only a small effect. This section sheds light on this relationship. First, the Vietnamese generation Z may have knowledge and attitude about the environment, but do not have enough resources or motivation to buy eco-friendly products. The main barrier faced by most respondents in the qualitative phase was the lack of available eco-friendly products; hence, only customers who truly had spare time and financial resources were willing to buy these products. Many interviewees expressed that their lack of eco-friendly fashion consumption can be traced back to their lack of access to local eco-friendly shops and brands. In addition, customer-driven factors, namely environmental concerns, and PBC do not significantly affect loyalty. This relationship is evident in both qualitative and quantitative phrases. These insignificant results contradict the findings in previous studies. This qualitative finding also implies that Vietnamese youth do not automatically associate eco-friendly fashions with high-quality products, which is contrary to the findings in previous study [ 21 ].

Moreover, the international and Vietnam-based studies from producers’ perspectives identify five major elements influencing customers’ purchase intention of eco-friendly products: transparency, influencers, acculturation, and self-esteem [ 71 , 72 ]. Our study found only 3 of these elements, and no Gen Z participants mentioned acculturation. The difference between customers’ perceptions in this study and producers’ perceptions in previous studies highlights the gap between these stakeholders. Moreover, many previous studies have assumed that Vietnamese consumers have collectivist cultures. However, at least in our findings on the eco-friendly fashion industry, Generation Z participants illustrated individualism in both quantitative and qualitative results. Our participants concentrated on product quality (PIV), self-esteem, and resources (CPB) in making decisions rather than their knowledge of environmental consequences (Enfv). This new finding might be explained by the growth of Vietnamese Generation Z in a peaceful and modernized country without worrying about survivability—the pressure that previous generations must collectively join hands to achieve. Their values might shift from collectivism to individualism due to Western influences from globalization and more commodity [ 73 ]. With this contrasting finding from the literature, businesses and scholars should facilitate more research on generation Z to capture their unique nature, preventing stereotyping and outdated data from hampering effective business and marketing decisions.

Notably in the qualitative section, most interviewees suggested that firms should raise awareness and increase the accessibility of eco-friendly products to promote sustainable consumption. However, the SEM-PLS results illustrate that Gen Z’s knowledge and awareness are insignificant compared to perceived product quality and control behaviors. Hence, the contradiction of Gen Z’s suggestions in the qualitative phase and their responses in the quantitative phase implies that Gen Z’s perceptions might not be consistent with their actions. This contradiction may also imply that the qualitative phase is vulnerable to the social desirability bias. Future research should investigate their behavior from more rigorous psychological methods.

In terms of managerial implications, these findings and comparisons have practical implications at both micro and macro scales. The mixed-methods approach allows fashion manufacturers and retailers to develop both data-driven and design-thinking and customer-centric strategies. On micro scale, Rajkishore Nayak mentioned in his recent study that there is a lack of research on sustainable development in fashion firms in Vietnam [ 72 , 74 ]. He identified factors the that prevent Vietnamese fashion firms from adopting eco-friendly production by interviewing suppliers. Financial constraints, lack of access to modern technologies, lack of understanding, and difficulty finding potential markets for sustainable products are challenges for SMEs. From understanding the problems faced by Vietnamese eco-fashion firms in budgeting and market identification, our study concentrates on customers’ perspectives to identify their needs and criteria for evaluating eco-friendly fashion products. Our study shows that Vietnamese firms should pay more attention to their services and products in the case of financial and resource constraints rather than investing in green marketing to educate Gen Z customers. This is driven by the data that product-related quality has a stronger influence on customers’ behavioral intentions than environmental awareness. Moreover, since the PBC plays the most important role in stimulating purchase intention among young customers, eco-friendly fashion businesses should target upper-income groups of young customers. On the macro scale, the government should prioritize financial and technological support for fashion firms to develop high-quality eco-friendly fashion and optimize their logistics to ensure the availability of products in the market, ensuring the availability of the products to the majority of Gen Z customers. Some industrial strategies and notes on these policies have been developed from consultant firms, such as the McKinsey and Boston Consultant Group, and the World Economic Forum [ 75 , 76 ].

In terms of theoretical implications, the research also highlights and compares the intensity of the effect of these factors on customer loyalty—a variable that has been underlooked in the literature on eco-friendly fashion in Vietnam. The study also suggests that future research should investigate how social media promotes eco-friendly fashion within the youth generation. Second, this study addresses the research gap and conflicts mentioned in the literature on the roles of environmental concern and PBC on purchase intention in Vietnam and the eco-friendly fashion context. The inconsistency between this study and other empirical papers in different contexts shows that context may play an important role in young behavior intention toward eco-friendliness. As the result may not be transferable globally, researchers across the world should conduct research on their particular contexts. Finally, rather than investigating the relationship between these variables purely with numerical data as in previous studies, the data-driven results are also aided with content-rich and insight from in-depth interviews with participants to provide a potential explanation/ justification for the customer’s behavioral intention. The qualitative section shows the potential role of social media in stimulating the purchase intention and awareness of young customers in an eco-friendly fashion. Therefore, shop owners in Vietnam can also attempt to adopt this media channel to acquire new customers and increase the presence of their products. However, this relationship has conflicting views on the empirical evidence. For instance, previous studies only confirmed the importance of social media on purchase intention in the cosmetic industry but not in the organic clothing industry [ 77 , 78 ]. Hence, future research can test this relationship to investigate whether social media can have a strong influence on purchase intention in eco-friendly clothing in Vietnam.

This study has some limitations. First, the study only concentrates on generation Z in Vietnam; hence, the data cannot be generalized to different contexts and age groups. Future research should focus on other age groups and countries. Second, the research only investigates the factors, motivations, and barriers that influence the purchase intention and customer loyalty of Vietnamese youth to suggest potential policies and management strategies. Future research should employ a cost-benefit analysis or pre-post analysis to measure and compare the effectiveness of potential solutions. Finally, this study only investigated three service-product quality variables (CF, PVI, and CS) and two customers’ perception and behavior variables (PCB and ENVF). These variables can only explain 48.6% of purchase intention variants and 54.2% of customer loyalty variants with weak and moderate predictive power respectively. Future research should further investigate other aspects that might influence the purchase and loyalty of customers, such as the role of technology, social influence, green innovation, and customer engagement with the firm. These findings can help firms and governments develop a more comprehensive strategy to promote the widespread and sustainable adoption of eco-friendly fashion products, which in turn benefits society in the long run.

This study employs a mixed-methods approach to study how customers’ perceptions of product-service quality and their environmental awareness and capacity impact the purchase intention and customer loyalty toward eco-friendly fashion products among Vietnamese Gen Z. The qualitative results further show that the knowledge and attitude toward eco-friendly fashion practices are not sufficient to convince young customers to afford eco-friendly fashion products. The quantitative results show that while customer-related factors play a more significant role in stimulating purchase intention, only product-service perceived quality factors impact loyalty. From Generation Z interviewee’ perspectives, to promote the adoption of eco-friendly fashion in Vietnam, on micro scale, eco-friendly fashion shop owners in Vietnam should pay more attention to their services and products rather than investing in green marketing to educate customers on environmental awareness because product-related features has stronger influence on customers’ behavioral intention. On the macro scale, the government should prioritize financial and technological support for fashion firms to develop high-quality eco-friendly fashion and optimize their logistics to ensure the availability of products in the market, ensuring the availability of the products to the majority of Gen Z customers.

Supporting information

S1 file. question guide for semi-structured interview..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272789.s001

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272789.s002

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all participants and academic experts because their opinions and contributions help us formulate the research presentation.

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The global environmental injustice of fast fashion

• Rachel Bick 1   na1 ,
• Erika Halsey 1   na1 &
• Christine C. Ekenga   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6209-4888 1  

Environmental Health volume  17 , Article number:  92 ( 2018 ) Cite this article

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Fast fashion, inexpensive and widely available of-the-moment garments, has changed the way people buy and dispose of clothing. By selling large quantities of clothing at cheap prices, fast fashion has emerged as a dominant business model, causing garment consumption to skyrocket. While this transition is sometimes heralded as the “democratization” of fashion in which the latest styles are available to all classes of consumers, the human and environmental health risks associated with inexpensive clothing are hidden throughout the lifecycle of each garment. From the growth of water-intensive cotton, to the release of untreated dyes into local water sources, to worker’s low wages and poor working conditions; the environmental and social costs involved in textile manufacturing are widespread.

In this paper, we posit that negative externalities at each step of the fast fashion supply chain have created a global environmental justice dilemma. While fast fashion offers consumers an opportunity to buy more clothes for less, those who work in or live near textile manufacturing facilities bear a disproportionate burden of environmental health hazards. Furthermore, increased consumption patterns have also created millions of tons of textile waste in landfills and unregulated settings. This is particularly applicable to low and middle-income countries (LMICs) as much of this waste ends up in second-hand clothing markets. These LMICs often lack the supports and resources necessary to develop and enforce environmental and occupational safeguards to protect human health. We discuss the role of industry, policymakers, consumers, and scientists in promoting sustainable production and ethical consumption in an equitable manner.

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Fast fashion is a term used to describe the readily available, inexpensively made fashion of today. The word “fast” describes how quickly retailers can move designs from the catwalk to stores, keeping pace with constant demand for more and different styles. With the rise of globalization and growth of a global economy, supply chains have become international, shifting the growth of fibers, the manufacturing of textiles, and the construction of garments to areas with cheaper labor. Increased consumption drives the production of inexpensive clothing, and prices are kept down by outsourcing production to low and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Globally, 80 billion pieces of new clothing are purchased each year, translating to $1.2 trillion annually for the global fashion industry. The majority of these products are assembled in China and Bangladesh while the United States consumes more clothing and textiles than any other nation in the world [ 1 ]. Approximately 85 % of the clothing Americans consume, nearly 3.8 billion pounds annually, is sent to landfills as solid waste, amounting to nearly 80 pounds per American per year [ 2 , 3 ].

The global health costs associated with the production of cheap clothing are substantial. While industrial disasters such as the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire have led to improved occupational protections and work standards in the United States, the same cannot be said for LMICs. The hazardous working conditions that attracted regulatory attention in the United States and European Union have not been eliminated, but merely shifted overseas. The social costs associated with the global textile and garment industry are significant as well. Defined as “all direct and indirect losses sustained by third persons or the general public as a result of unrestrained economic activities,” the social costs involved in the production of fast fashion include damages to the environment, human health, and human rights at each step along the production chain [ 4 ].

Fast fashion as a global environmental justice issue

Environmental justice is defined by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, as the “fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies” [ 5 ]. In the United States, this concept has primarily been used in the scientific literature and in practice to describe the disproportionate placement of superfund sites (hazardous waste sites) in or near communities of color. However, environmental justice, as it has been defined, is not limited to the United States and need not be constrained by geopolitical boundaries. The textile and garment industries, for example, shift the environmental and occupational burdens associated with mass production and disposal from high income countries to the under-resourced (e.g. low income, low-wage workers, women) communities in LMICs. Extending the environmental justice framework to encompass the disproportionate impact experienced by those who produce and dispose of our clothing is essential to understanding the magnitude of global injustice perpetuated through the consumption of cheap clothing. In the context of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12 which calls for sustainable consumption and production as part of national and sectoral plans, sustainable business practices, consumer behavior, and the reduction and elimination of fast fashion should all be a target of global environmental justice advocates.

Environmental hazards during production

The first step in the global textile supply chain is textile production, the process by which both natural and synthetic fibers are made. Approximately 90 % of clothing sold in the United States is made with cotton or polyester, both associated with significant health impacts from the manufacturing and production processes [ 6 ]. Polyester, a synthetic textile, is derived from oil, while cotton requires large amounts of water and pesticides to grow. Textile dyeing results in additional hazards as untreated wastewater from dyes are often discharged into local water systems, releasing heavy metals and other toxicants that can adversely impact the health of animals in addition to nearby residents [ 6 ].

Occupational hazards during production

Garment assembly, the next step in the global textile supply chain, employs 40 million workers around the world [ 7 ]. LMICs produce 90% of the world’s clothing. Occupational and safety standards in these LMICs are often not enforced due to poor political infrastructure and organizational management [ 8 ]. The result is a myriad of occupational hazards, including respiratory hazards due to poor ventilation such as cotton dust and synthetic air particulates, and musculoskeletal hazards from repetitive motion tasks. The health hazards that prompted the creation of textile labor unions in the United States and the United Kingdom in the early 1900’s have now shifted to work settings in LMICs. In LMICs, reported health outcomes include debilitating and life-threatening conditions such as lung disease and cancer, damage to endocrine function, adverse reproductive and fetal outcomes, accidental injuries, overuse injuries and death [ 9 , 10 , 11 ]. Periodic reports of international disasters, such as the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse which killed 1134 Bangladeshi workers, are stark reminders of the health hazards faced by garment workers. These disasters, however, have not demonstrably changed safety standards for workers in LMICs [ 12 ].

Textile waste

While getting finished garments to consumers in the high-income countries is seen as the end of the line for the fashion industry, environmental injustices continue long after the garment is sold. The fast fashion model encourages consumers to view clothing as disposable. In fact, the average American throws away approximately 80 pounds of clothing and textiles annually, occupying nearly 5% of landfill space [ 3 ]. Clothing not sent directly to the landfill often ends up in the second-hand clothing trade. Approximately 500,000 tons of used clothing are exported abroad from the United States each year, the majority ending up in LMICs [ 8 ]. In 2015, the United States exported more than $700 million worth of used clothing [ 13 ]. Second-hand clothing not sold in the United States market is compressed into 1000-pound bales and exported overseas to be “graded” (sorted, categorized and re-baled) by low-wage workers in LMICs and sold in second-hand markets. Clothing not sold in markets becomes solid waste, clogging rivers, greenways, and parks, and creating the potential for additional environmental health hazards in LMICs lacking robust municipal waste systems.

Solutions, innovation, and social justice

Ensuring environmental justice at each stage in the global supply chain remains a challenge. Global environmental justice will be dependent upon innovations in textile development, corporate sustainability, trade policy, and consumer habits.

Sustainable fibers

The sustainability of a fiber refers to the practices and policies that reduce environmental pollution and minimize the exploitation of people or natural resources in meeting lifestyle needs. Across the board, natural cellulosic and protein fibers are thought to be better for the environment and for human health, but in some cases manufactured fibers are thought to be more sustainable. Fabrics such as Lyocell, made from the cellulose of bamboo, are made in a closed loop production cycle in which 99% of the chemicals used to develop fabric fibers are recycled. The use of sustainable fibers will be key in minimizing the environmental impact of textile production.

Corporate sustainability

Oversight and certification organizations such as Fair Trade America and the National Council of Textiles Organization offer evaluation and auditing tools for fair trade and production standards. While some companies do elect to get certified in one or more of these independent accrediting programs, others are engaged in the process of “greenwashing.” Capitalizing on the emotional appeal of eco-friendly and fair trade goods, companies market their products as “green” without adhering to any criteria [ 14 ]. To combat these practices, industry-wide adoption of internationally recognized certification criteria should be adopted to encourage eco-friendly practices that promote health and safety across the supply chain.

Trade policy

While fair trade companies can attempt to compete with fast fashion retailers, markets for fair trade and eco-friendly textile manufacturing remain small, and ethically and environmentally sound supply chains are difficult and expensive to audit. High income countries can promote occupational safety and environmental health through trade policy and regulations. Although occupational and environmental regulations are often only enforceable within a country’s borders, there are several ways in which policymakers can mitigate the global environmental health hazards associated with fast fashion. The United States, for example, could increase import taxes for garments and textiles or place caps on annual weight or quantities imported from LMICs. At the other end of the clothing lifecycle, some LMICs have begun to regulate the import of used clothing. The United Nations Council for African Renewal, for example, recently released a report citing that “Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda are raising taxes on secondhand clothes imports and at the same time offering incentives to local manufacturers” [ 15 ].

The role of the consumer

Trade policies and regulations will be the most effective solutions in bringing about large-scale change to the fast fashion industry. However, consumers in high income countries have a role to play in supporting companies and practices that minimize their negative impact on humans and the environment. While certifications attempt to raise industry standards, consumers must be aware of greenwashing and be critical in assessing which companies actually ensure a high level of standards versus those that make broad, sweeping claims about their social and sustainable practices [ 14 ]. The fast fashion model thrives on the idea of more for less, but the age-old adage “less in more” must be adopted by consumers if environmental justice issues in the fashion industry are to be addressed. The United Nation’s SDG 12, “Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns,” seeks to redress the injustices caused by unfettered materialism. Consumers in high income countries can do their part to promote global environmental justice by buying high-quality clothing that lasts longer, shopping at second-hand stores, repairing clothing they already own, and purchasing from retailers with transparent supply chains.

Conclusions

In the two decades since the fast fashion business model became the norm for big name fashion brands, increased demand for large amounts of inexpensive clothing has resulted in environmental and social degradation along each step of the supply chain. The environmental and human health consequences of fast fashion have largely been missing from the scientific literature, research, and discussions surrounding environmental justice. The breadth and depth of social and environmental abuses in fast fashion warrants its classification as an issue of global environmental justice.

Environmental health scientists play a key role in supporting evidence-based public health. Similar to historical cases of environmental injustice in the United States, the unequal distribution of environmental exposures disproportionally impact communities in LMICs. There is an emerging need for research that examines the adverse health outcomes associated with fast fashion at each stage of the supply chain and post-consumer process, particularly in LMICs. Advancing work in this area will inform the translation of research findings to public health policies and practices that lead to sustainable production and ethical consumption.

Abbreviations

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Rachel Bick and Erika Halsey contributed equally to this work.

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Biodegradable fabric might be the next best thing in clothing

Sustainable fabrics help the fashion industry rid itself of a global waste problem.

Every year Aarav Chavda goes scuba diving in the same Florida reefs. A former McKinsey analyst and mechanical engineer, Chavda has watched the corals blanch white over time, and he has noticed species dwindle— except the lionfish.

Local and federal officials near Atlantic and Caribbean waters have tried a number of methods to eradicate the lionfish, a gorgeously striped and spiny invasive species that has no predators in the region and eats many other fish. Chavda had a new idea: Make it fashion. Along with two other avid divers, Chavda founded a startup called Inversa and invented a process that transforms lionfish skin into a supple, attractive leather. Next, they added two other invasive species— Burmese pythons from the Florida Everglades and carp from the Mississippi River. They’ve achieved some real success: a number of brands, including Piper and Skye and Rex Shoes, have used their leathers for wallets, footballs, flip-flops, and a cool-looking python dagger and sheath .

The toxic impact of the fashion industry – meaning not high fashion brands, but the companies that make the materials that form our clothes, as well as the companies constructing the clothes – is well-known. Up to 4 percent of global climate emissions, according to a McKinsey report , and an unknown but substantial percent of global water pollution also derive from it. This is a baffling, often overwhelming problem. Humans require clothing to survive – plus, we love our clothes and derive deep meaning from how we present ourselves to the world.

“It’s two sides of the coin,” says Monica Buchan-Ng, a sustainability expert at the London College of Fashion’s Centre for Sustainable Fashion. “[Clothes] can be this incredible creative force of self-expression and identity. But also we know that the way the fashion system works at present, it’s just destruction after destruction.”

However, the sheer reach of the industry also makes it a tremendous potential tool for innovation and change, and a number of new fabrics are a crucial part of that change. So far, Chavda says, Inversa has removed 50,000 lionfish, burmese pythons, and carp. In a few years, he hopes to be removing tens of millions. “I’m bullish,” Chavda says, “because I think the consumer cares.”

Fashion addresses its sustainability problems

When asked about her favorite innovations in eco-friendly fashion, Julia Marsh, CEO of Sway, a company that makes a seaweed-based plastic used in delivery materials by large companies such as J. Crew, says simply, “Reuse and thrifting.”

It’s true that a cultural shift towards lower consumption, along with tighter governmental regulations, may be the most effective long-term solutions for mitigating the industry’s impact. But evolving the fabrics we use is an important piece of the puzzle as well.

Innovations

Fabric waste is an increasingly toxic aspect of how fashion affects the planet. People bought nearly twice as much clothing in 2015 as in 2000 , and most of that ended up in landfills. Fast fashion brands like Shein and others produce – and stimulate consumer demand for – ever more cheaper clothing that falls apart quickly, adding to a global waste problem.

Many fabrics have a negative impact long before they’re thrown away. Cheaper synthetic fabrics, like polyester, contain microplastics that shed into the earth’s waters every time they’re washed. Cotton, although a “natural” fiber, is farmed with high levels of pesticide, and in some regions, relies on forced and/or child labor. As for leather, the livestock production required to create animal leather is not merely cruel to animals, it also causes deforestation, water pollution, and very high carbon emissions. But even “vegan” leather comes at a high cost, as it’s frequently made from products derived from fossil fuels, including polyurethane.

At the moment it’s very difficult – not to mention expensive – to buy any new clothing that doesn’t have a negative effect on the planet but as awareness of the issue increases, so have attempted solutions. Over the last decade, governments (especially in the European Union) have begun, slowly, to regulate fabric waste, pollution and emissions. And more people have found new, environmentally-friendly ways to make clothes. Some of this effort starts with attacking supply chain problems, creating better systems for recycling or repurposing old clothing, or inventing dye processes that aren’t poisonous to waterways. But the field of material development has seen some particularly fascinating innovations as well.

Innovators experiment with biodegradable materials

Uyen Tran grew up in the city of Danang, Vietnam, an area dominated by garment factories. Acutely aware of the global reach of fashion manufacturing, she was also aware from a young age of the global reach of fashion waste. Growing up, she and her family would shop at second-hand stores for brand-name clothing rejected by Westerners: “a lot of North Face, Ralph Lauren …Nike,” she says. After moving to the United States, where she studied at Parsons School of Design and worked for some of the brands she had first encountered in Vietnamese secondhand shops, she became interested in methods of fabric manufacture that avoided those levels of waste.

Her curiosity drove her to research chitin, a natural polymer that can be extracted from shrimp shells — a regenerative, no-waste product that can be ethically sourced from the Vietnamese seafood industry. She turns it into a liquid and flattens it to create a shiny material that looks and behaves somewhat like pleather or leather. TômTex, Tran’s company, also produces a second fabric derived from chitin found in mushrooms, a frequent favorite source of sustainable fabric innovators because of its quick growth and low environmental impact. TômTex has partnered with luxury brands like Dauphinette and Peter Do to showcase its innovative, high-fashion, fully biodegradable fabric. “Waste is something that humans created,” Tran says. “For me, if we create something, it should biodegrade and decompose as nutrients back to the soil, so animals can feed on it, a tree can grow on it.”

The next stage for TômTex is going beyond small-run capsule collections to commercialization: scaling up production so TômTex can replace a larger chunk of traditionally produced materials and make a real impact. To do so, they need significant investment. “Even brands that want to put in money … it’s not going to be $20 million,” Tran says. “We need that much to build a factory.” She’s working on brand relationships as a way of building visibility while pursuing venture capital.

Other sustainable fabric startups are searching for capital as well. Their innovations range from the fairly simple — adding sustainably farmed nettle fiber to a cotton blend, for instance, in the case of fashion company PANGAIA — to the hugely complex: bioengineering processes that might take many years to develop.

“We are at the frontier of new biomaterials, which have the potential to have a lower carbon footprint, to use much less water and much less chemicals, and potentially biodegrade naturally at the end of their life, depending on how they’re treated,” says Suzanne Lee, founder of Biofabricate, a consultancy firm that helps companies working on this type of material.

Some companies are succeeding on a grand scale. The Japanese company Spiber, one of the more successful biotech companies working in fabric development, just announced that it had raised $65 million to support mass production of its plant-based, spider-silk-inspired fibers.

Other companies have struggled. “The thing you learn about all these advanced materials is they always are super promising in the beginning, in the lab,” says Dan Widmaier, the CEO of Bolt Threads, which recently had to pause production on a mushroom-based leather alternative called Mylo because of fundraising issues. “Can it work reproducibly at scale, meeting quality specs of the customer as they actually need them, meet their timelines and deliverables? Can it be financed to that scale? Those are the things that break all these.”

Innovation and finances meet in the middle

Earlier this year, a well-regarded Swedish fabric recycling company Renewcell declared bankruptcy , sending shock waves through this small and collegial world. Renewcell, which developed a process to turn old clothes into new cotton, had raised $10.6 million and opened its first factory in 2022. It had partnerships with a number of prominent brands including H & M, which had agreed to use 18,000 tons of its cloth, Circulose, in 2025. But orders still weren’t enough to support production, and the company also ran into quality issues that slowed it down.

Lee thinks the shock of the Renewcell failure could actually motivate brands to invest more steadily in other, similar products. “We actually really need to back these things if we want them to happen, because we just can’t assume they will naturally succeed on their own accord,” she says.

Meanwhile, sustainable fabric companies are just trying to get the word out. Spinnova is a Finnish company that turns cellulose from wood pulp into a biodegradable fiber. Brands like Marimekko and Adidas have used it in their clothes, and the company is scaling up production. “I think that’s actually the thing that speaks best for itself: having brands publish actual product and being able to show that, hey, look, this is real,” says CEO Tuomas Oijala. “It works, it meets the needs of consumers and by the way, it’s also a good value for money deal.”

For the Inversa founders, the next step is reaching a larger audience of consumers and they are optimistic that their story will resonate. “I think when you tell the consumer, like, ‘Oh, buy this, you’re sustainable,’ you have to force them to acknowledge the guilt or the karma or whatever they were doing before,” Chavda says. “If you just tell them, ‘Hey, this wallet has saved these animals,’ or ‘You’re protecting these coral reefs,’ you just skip that whole piece.”

Inversa has already started considering what other invasive species it might use as a basis for its fabrics while continuing to build relationships with local fishing collectives, governments, and conservation NGOs to ensure it sources invasive species in the least harmful way.

Meanwhile, Chavda believes that the sustainable fabrics community is on its way to making real, lasting change. “We have different methodologies of doing it, but … whether that’s fiber made from seaweed or polyester spun in a different way that’s biodegradable, we’re all trying to do the same thing — make the planet a better place,” he says.

About this story

Editing by Bronwen Latimer. Copy editing by Jeremy Lang. Design and development by Audrey Valbuena. Design editing by Betty Chavarria. Photo editing by Haley Hamblin. Project development by Evan Bretos and Hope Corrigan. Project editing by Marian Chia-Ming Liu.

Jumpstarting value creation with data and analytics in fashion and luxury

The COVID-19 crisis is first and foremost a humanitarian crisis, but its economic impacts are far-reaching. Fashion is no exception: apparel companies lost 90 percent of their profits in 2020, according to the McKinsey Global Fashion Index . Consumer confidence plummeted during the pandemic, and it has yet to recover.

Data will be the key to unlocking the insights needed to adapt to change and to reengage customers in the coming months and years. Yet the pandemic has exposed a major shortfall in data gathering and analysis across much of the industry. The gap between data leaders and laggards has widened: some data-savvy fashion and luxury companies have dramatically increased their market value, while others have lost ground to competitors. Indeed, the 25 top-performing retailers—most of which epitomize the powerful shift to digital, data, and analytics—represent more than 90 percent of the sector’s increase in global market capitalization during the pandemic.

Simply put, the sooner fashion and luxury companies learn to harness the power of data, the better.

Data gold mines in the value chain

Data are more abundant than ever—and the COVID-19 crisis has made the case for building data capability even more pressing. The fashion and luxury firms that are likely to come out of the crisis stronger than before are tapping into their data to stay a step ahead.

The use cases for data and analytics are varied, numerous, and fairly well known, but where to focus along the value chain isn’t always intuitive. The challenge often lies in pinpointing where and how to integrate data into the business in a cross-functional way, and building the appropriate operating model to do so. Over the past 12 months, we’ve seen fashion companies navigate and extract value across the whole value chain.

Fashion companies that have harnessed the power of data to personalize customer e-commerce experiences have grown digital sales by between 30 and 50 percent.

In particular, fashion and luxury companies that have integrated data into their planning, merchandising, and supply-chain processes have seen tangible results. Data-driven decisions around stock and store optimization have increased sales by 10 percent. And enhancing visibility throughout the supply chain has streamlined inventory management, improved returns forecasting, and optimized transport networks—reducing inventory costs by up to 15 percent. Most significantly, fashion companies that have harnessed the power of data to personalize customer e-commerce experiences have grown digital sales by between 30 and 50 percent (Exhibit 1).

While it is evident that data and analytics can unlock significant value in e-commerce sales, the potential for improving physical sales should not be ignored. In an omnichannel world like the one we are heading toward in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis, businesses need the flexibility to respond and adjust to shifting customer preferences. As pandemic-related restrictions ease, physical sales may pick up again. Data capabilities are relevant for getting the omnichannel model right.

Four pillars for building data capabilities in fashion and luxury

Data are a precious resource. Leaving such information untapped leaves value on the table. Fashion and luxury companies can build four critical capabilities to unlock their data’s value: strategy and use-case battlegrounds, data architecture and platforms, governance and operating model, and talent and culture.

Define the data strategy and prioritize the ‘battlegrounds’

The data journey starts with setting a vision for how data will support business goals over the next two to four years. A shorter horizon may be too shortsighted and not ambitious enough for fashion and luxury businesses. Any longer, and time to impact makes the upfront investment untenable. This vision-setting process is best led by a chief data officer (CDO), someone senior in the organization who can champion the change through the many competing business priorities. The data journey is a collaborative process including most executives, since use cases hit so many parts of the value chain. The CDO translates that vision into a set of core priority business domains—the company’s data and analytics “battlegrounds”—and defines specific use cases for each priority domain.

The following example brings this process to life: A leading digital-native fashion marketplace declared “size and fit” its top data and analytics battleground. The firm created a team of researchers, data scientists, and engineers embedded in the merchandising and product teams to solve the persistent returns–fit-optimization problem. The firm defined the initial size-curve buy as a single use case and set out to make it a much more data-driven and dynamic decision.

Customer personalization should be on every fashion player’s data and analytics road map, as this is table stakes today. A leading sports-apparel retailer developed an ambitious data vision to power one-to-one relationships with consumers through data-driven personalized experiences. The firm collects huge volumes of data generated from customer-facing apps that enable it to offer more targeted and personalized experiences. The firm has also acquired predictive analytics platforms that forecast the behavior and lifetime value of customers, among other capabilities. Personalization as a battleground has enabled this retailer to develop a whole series of use cases to drive one-to-one engagement with customers.

The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated technology use along the value chain, significantly increasing the ‘data footprint’

The pandemic has catalyzed the adoption of many tech tools across the fashion and luxury value chain. For example, many brands and wholesalers have adopted buying platforms such as JOOR or NuORDER, use enhanced digital-imaging tools including ORDRE or Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), and use 3-D design tools such as Backbone, Optitex, and Browzwear to help improve the product-design process.

These tools not only boost digitization of key processes but also significantly improve the quality and quantity of the data generated—which in turn accelerate the quality of the insights gleaned.

Other fashion companies have personalized their customers’ e-commerce journeys, and in doing so have been able to offer customers what they want when they want it and build brand loyalty. Data and analytics applications have helped these companies to optimize assortment, reduce returns, and launch new brands (see sidebar “The COVID-19 crisis has accelerated technology use along the value chain, significantly increasing the ‘data footprint’”). Building a personalized interaction with customers across multiple channels has led to a 20 percent increase in revenue, and companies that have used data to optimize price have also been able to increase margins by up to 10 percent (Exhibit 2).

Invest in data architecture and platforms aligned with ‘battlegrounds’

Modern fashion data architectures handle core retail day-to-day data sets that are large and unstructured, such as SKUs, sales, point-of-sale (POS) transactions, stock transactions, e-commerce touchpoints, customer 360 information, and radio-frequency identification (RFID). The truth is, most fashion and luxury companies have expensive legacy systems built on inflexible, nonscalable, and limited data warehouses that cannot integrate new data sources.

Most turn to data lakes as a solution, which serves as the organization’s single source of truth and features several layers for data consumption. However, modern data architectures must evolve  across all layers, drawing on new architectural paradigms including cloud-based data platforms, serverless and containerized data platforms and applications, no-SQL databases, flexible data schemas, and solutions that provide real-time data-processing capabilities.

To picture these innovations in practice, consider the following example: A leading fashion player built a new data architecture, and most of the company’s databases and systems have been migrated in the past three to four years. This retailer made a significant investment to develop a massive multilayer data lake in the private cloud and consolidate hundreds of internal and external data repositories. In addition, the retailer set up a data-architecture lab and is continually experimenting with new data tools to support and improve performance. For instance, the firm recently deployed a real-time data-streaming platform to power a wide range of business use cases across its priority domains of digital personalization and real-time supply-chain management. Thanks to these efforts, it has achieved processing power of several petabytes of data per hour, enabling a rapid response to market changes while also acquiring the capacity to identify trending products and introduce them earlier than competitors.

However, many fashion and luxury companies fall into blind investment traps. Too often, the CDO will ask for the freedom to get the data fixed before committing to value creation through data use cases. It’s a common fallacy. Successful fashion players scale data-platform investments alongside real value delivery. This phased approach allows firms to pace investment as the benefits materialize—saving on upfront investment. Firms that get this right typically invest in the resources they need to deliver the first set of use cases, and then build on this in an incremental way, ensuring development of road-tested assets (in particular, data protocols, ontologies, models, and data products) to ensure faster time to market with every new use case.

Define a high-performing data and analytics operating model

Data management is often the Achilles’ heel of many fashion and luxury companies. The absence of high-quality data and clean taxonomies, and the general lack of common language and understanding around data across the organization, wreak havoc when starting on an analytics journey. This could not be more true for core data sets; data from POS transactions, for example, are a mix of structured and unstructured data and include sensitive personal information such as credit card numbers. And SKU–product data, which is key to managing integrated omnichannel stock, typically comes with unstandardized formats from suppliers, generating a need for tight master-data management and integration of several merchandising and vendor-management systems.

Fashion companies have tackled the problem by setting up a value-backed data-operating-model framework  across 20 to 30 data domains—such as sales, stock, and store transactions, among others—that have a clear owner in each business unit. These owners are best placed to define what kind of information is needed from various business functions and understand what such data can measure. They can also work collaboratively to ensure that the organization has a uniform definition of data and put processes in place to monitor data quality. Ownership is important, as it builds the mindset that the process of getting data right is not just an IT issue, but it is critical for decision making across the organization.

A leading integrated omnichannel fast-fashion player followed this approach, with tangible results. The firm defined a data-governance framework—including roles, responsibilities, and processes—to improve data quality and build an understanding of key data sets necessary to provide insight and enhance decision making. The firm set up teams responsible for developing tools or sets of use cases for the business, and those same teams were also responsible for defining and integrating data governance. The firm saw a 50 percent improvement in data quality, measured as compliance with business-defined data-quality rules.

A more sophisticated solution is to use machine-learning algorithms to improve data quality in key data assets such as customer information. For instance, fashion retailers have used pattern-recognition algorithms to eliminate duplicates in customer databases. And other machine-learning techniques such as data imputation and natural language processing can improve demand forecasting (Exhibit 3).

Develop talent and build a data and analytics culture

Many fashion and luxury companies have taken the leap of upskilling their workforces and reinventing talent and culture practices. We see fashion companies grabbing talent from academia, digital natives, and start-ups; few build their bench purely in-house. However, talent is often hidden in plain sight. Some leading businesses have found success with data academies to train new data professionals—such as data architects, data scientists, and data stewards—and ensure that core decision makers, such as designers, merchandising teams, and e-commerce teams, can translate data and analytics to fit business needs. A data culture that not only accepts data-driven insights and modeling, but also is hungry for it, is critical to get value from the data investment. Too many fashion companies make the leap only to find the business is stuck in old ways of working, and these firms tend to view data and analytics with an unfair amount of skepticism .

How to get started and shape a winning data road map

How a north american fast-fashion firm turned to data in a crisis.

In March 2020, stores across the United States closed overnight, sales plummeted by 80 percent, and a leading fast-fashion player was sitting on inventory locked in the back rooms of its stores. The firm had a few months of runway and was facing bankruptcy.

Fast on their feet, executives at the company created three cross-functional teams to accelerate one-to-one personalized marketing, launch ship-from-store, and mine merchandising insights using the rich data they were getting from their online channel. In weeks, the firm was operating in a fundamentally different way—testing and learning, driving data-backed actions, and making decisions as a cohesive unit.

The business also avoided massive discounting as other apparel retailers raced to the bottom through promotional offers. Instead, the firm canceled its fall-season orders and was able to quickly respond to the at-home casual trends that were gaining momentum. By the end of 2020, the business was picking up market share, a first in ten years.

The firm’s leap into data and analytics set it on a course of transformation—the business went on to create cross-functional teams across all major steps in the value chain. In 2021, it launched teams for buy online, pick up in store; price and promo; and digital experience and started a new subscription business and a new marketplace business.

Many fashion and luxury companies have harnessed the power of data to build stronger relationships with their customers and drive sales (see sidebar “How a North American fast-fashion firm turned to data in a crisis”). They have also achieved operational efficiencies that have increased margins. But building data capability is only half of the equation. A data-transformation strategy and road map can put it into practice and set companies on a path to unlocking value. Fashion and luxury companies seeking to extract value from data can implement a sustained campaign in four phases:

• A North Star definition phase, headed up by the CDO, to define the vision, priority domains, and key battlegrounds across the value chain. During this phase, the company creates the data strategy, establishes the data team, selects data-architecture tools, and identifies pilot use cases for high-impact, quick-win opportunities in priority domains. This phase typically lasts six to ten weeks.
• The value-creation phase, where the company starts generating value through two or three quick-win use cases. In this phase, the company also migrates data to the new architecture, sets up data governance, and launches training and change-management programs. This phase lasts four to six months.
• Scale, where the transformation is scaled to tens of use cases in parallel, in three- to four-month development cycles, with many rounds of two-week sprints. In this phase, it is critical to tackle the topic of data culture, which is typically the most formidable barrier to scaling digital and analytics transformations. In fact, 33 percent of executives cited culture as the top challenge  in meeting their digital and analytics priorities. This phase lasts six to nine months.
• The final phase of data and analytics transformation, when data and analytics are fully embedded within the company value-creation machine. By now, the company will have data capabilities spread across the organization and will have hundreds of use cases in production that deliver value.

The initial leap into data should not be daunting for fashion and luxury companies; many have proven the investment worthwhile. What’s more, investment in data and analytics could pay for itself—the upfront cash investment can be scaled as value is created. The sooner fashion and luxury companies leap in, the better. And help is at hand—a strategic approach can structure an effective data-transformation program, build momentum through realizing quick wins, and create long-term value.

Sandrine Devillard is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Montreal office, Holger Harreis is a senior partner in the Düsseldorf office, Nicholas Landry is an associate partner in the Vancouver office, and Carlos Sanchez Altable is an associate partner in the Madrid office.

The authors wish to thank Anita Balchandani, Achim Berg, Antonio Gonzalo, Carly Donovan, Davide Grande, Kayvaun Rowshankish, Kate Smaje, and Asin Tavakoli for their contributions to this article.

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International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research

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• Published: 25 May 2023

(Un)Sustainable transitions towards fast and ultra-fast fashion

• Tulin Dzhengiz   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7909-6612 1 ,
• Teresa Haukkala 2 &
• Olli Sahimaa 3  

Fashion and Textiles volume  10 , Article number:  19 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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Due to pressing sustainability challenges, the fashion industry is undergoing tremendous change. Surprisingly, even though the unique context of fashion presents an opportunity for scholars to explore the (un)sustainable transitions, this context has yet to receive the attention of transition scholars. Our article explores fashion transitions and develops a conceptual framework demonstrating this transition's multi-level and multi-dimensional interactions. We draw on three literature areas: multi-level perspective (MLP) of sustainable transitions, institutional logics and framing contests. We then introduce a conceptual framework and illustrative examples from the industry and demonstrate the tensions between positive and negative environmental and social sustainability developments at the niche, regime and landscape levels. We show that while many positive developments can be seen in the regime players through the adoption of corporate sustainability initiatives, new business models and collaborations, more attention should also be given to some adverse developments. Overall, we contribute to the literature by exploring fashion transitions, an under-explored context, and by demonstrating the complexity of interactions due to the diffusion of heterogeneous institutional logics and framing contests between players.

Introduction

The fashion Footnote 1 industry is now considered the second most polluting after oil extraction and production (Diabat et al., 2014 , p. 1713). Scholars highlighted the industry’s environmental impacts, such as excessive water use and water pollution (Abbas et al., 2020 ), GHG emissions from processing fossil fuels (Franco, 2017 ), and the use of hazardous chemicals (Khurana & Ricchetti, 2016 ). The industry is responsible for 10% of annual global carbon emissions, equalling international flights and maritime shipping emissions, and is estimated to surge more than 50% by 2030 (World Bank, 2019 ). Moreover, scholars underlined the industry’s negative societal impacts, such as poor working conditions (Haug & Busch, 2015 ), health and safety issues (Cesar da Silva et al., 2021 ), abuses of human rights that include child labour and modern slavery (Peake & Kenner, 2020 ; Thorisdottir & Johannsdottir, 2020 ). The awareness of these environmental and social sustainability challenges triggered many changes in the industry towards sustainable and ethical fashion (Alptekinoglu & Orsdemir, 2020 ; DiVito & Bohnsack, 2017 ; Goldsworthy et al., 2018 ; Mishra et al., 2020 ; Moorhouse & Moorhouse, 2017 ). Still, the historical development of the industry towards fast fashion and the recent developments towards ultra-fast fashion present negative unsustainable transition trends (Buchel et al., 2018 ; Maloku, 2020 ). Thus, it is possible to observe both pro-sustainability (positive) and unsustainable (negative) patterns in the transition journey of the fashion industry. We, therefore, conceptually explore these developments drawing on the sustainability transitions literature and a commonly used framework in that domain: the multi-level perspective (MLP).

MLP is one of the most influential frameworks to explain social transformations that elaborate both the bottom-up and top-down dynamics and the multi-level nature of change (El Bilali, 2019a ; Geels, 2002 , 2010 , 2011 , 2020 ; Hörisch, 2015 ; Markard & Truffer, 2008 ; Walrave et al., 2018 ). Several scholars investigated the conflicting relationships and resistance to change in transitions (Hess, 2016 , 2018 , 2019 ; Lee & Hess, 2019 ), often drawing on the broader literature of social movements and framing (Benford, 1993 ; Benford & Snow, 2000 ), institutional theory (Fuenfschilling & Truffer, 2014 ; Geels, 2020 ) and institutional logics (Franco-Torres et al., 2020 ; Runhaar et al., 2020 ; Smink et al., 2015a , 2015b ). Scholars either studied how macro-level institutional structures have debilitated transition pathways; or focused on the micro- and meso-level framing efforts to change the institutional logics (Dobson, 2019 ; Strambach & Pflitsch, 2018 ). In recent years, scholars have emphasised the complementarity of institutional logics and framing and combined these lenses to understand and explain institutional inertia and change simultaneously (Ansari et al., 2013 ; Gray et al., 2015 ; Purdy et al., 2017 ).

In this paper, to shed light on the fashion industry's transition, we develop a framework that integrates institutional logics and framing with the interactions in MLP. Herein, drawing on Heinze ( 2020 ), we view the fashion system as a complex system that includes material elements (fabrics, factories and retailers), meanings (motivations and emotions) and competencies (capabilities for business, fashion design, and sustainability and responsibility). We specifically focus on the institutional logics and framings associated with the meanings dimension of this fashion system to explain the complexities of multi-level interactions, and we provide various examples to demonstrate the intricacies of fashion transition. Therefore, theoretically, we join the recent scholarly conversation on the current research agenda of transitions (Köhler et al., 2019 ) by framing contests and logics (Gray et al., 2015 ; Purdy et al., 2017 ) into the transitions literature (Geels, 2010 ; Schot & Kanger, 2018 ; Welch & Yates, 2018 ; Zolfagharian et al., 2019 ). We underline the lack of attention on unsustainable transitions and join others who problematised the sustainability assumption of transitions literature (Susur & Karakaya, 2021 ). Therefore, we answer the call of Antal et al. ( 2020 ), who invited transition scholars to study unsustainable trends, which have received scant attention thus far. Most importantly, we contribute to the literature by conceptually exploring fashion transitions. The fashion context has been largely ignored in transition studies and rarely explored using the lens of framing and institutional logics (Ozdamar Ertekin et al., 2020 ). By doing so, we start a meaningful conversation on unsustainable transitions in under-studied contexts like fashion.

The remainder of this paper is as follows. In Theoretical Background, we briefly review the literature about MLP in sustainability transitions, institutional logics, and framing. The following section integrates these specific literature areas and builds a conceptual framework while showcasing examples from fashion. In the Discussion, we summarise our findings and compare them with extant research. In Conclusion, we summarise our contributions, offer future research guidance and outline how practitioners can utilise our framework in various ways.

Literature Review

(un) sustainability in fashion.

The fashion industry “accounts for approximately $2 trillion in global revenue” (Hiller Connell & Kozar, 2017 , p. 1). With the dominance of fast fashion, speed-to-market has increased tremendously over the last two decades (Bhardwaj & Fairhurst, 2010 ), and clothing production almost doubled over the last 15 years (Freudenreich & Schaltegger, 2020 ). While the industry's economic contribution to our societies is significant, the industry also presents some unique challenges.

In 2015, the fashion industry used 79 billion cubic water; to give further perspective, only a single T-shirt requires 2700 L of water to produce (European Parliament, 2021 ). Only textile dyeing and finishing are responsible for 20% of global water pollution, and 0.5 million tonnes of microplastics are released every year to the oceans due to washing clothes made of synthetic fibres (European Parliament, 2021 ). Therefore, many scholars indicated the environmental impacts of this industry as excessive water use, wastewater and water pollution (Abbas et al., 2020 ; Cesar da Silva et al., 2021 ; de Oliveira Neto et al., 2019 ; Jia et al., 2020 ; Søndergård et al., 2004 ) and plastic pollution (Goldsworthy et al., 2018 ; Leal Filho et al., 2019 ; Moorhouse & Moorhouse, 2017 ). The industry is also responsible for 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions (European Parliament, 2021 ), thus the attention on air pollution (Jia et al., 2020 ; Niinimäki & Hassi, 2011 ). Due to the nature of fast fashion and increasing overconsumption (Jin & Shin, 2021 ), clothes are treated as disposable, and fast fashion is also responsible for tremendous waste and waste-related emissions and toxicity (Rossi et al., 2020 ; Stål & Corvellec, 2018 ).

Fashion presents a context whereby the consumers play a tremendous role in determining trends (Lee & Ha-Brookshire, 2018 ; Vehmas et al., 2018 ). However, due to globalisation and various trade agreements, material sourcing requires global vertically disintegrated value networks (Mellick et al., 2021 ; Taplin, 2014 ). It is known that a large portion of labour-intensive clothing production takes place in developing economies (Morris & Barnes, 2009 , p. 2). Thus, the end consumer is often far removed from the producers, making it difficult for the consumers to be aware of issues in this global value chain. These extended global value chains make transparency and traceability difficult for the end producer and consumers. Thus, many social sustainability issues in global textile and clothing value chains are unfortunately ignored. These issues include poor working conditions, labour rights, low wages, child labour, and modern slavery (Carrigan et al., 2013 ; Joergens & Barnes, 2006 ; Kennedy et al., 2017 ; Mair et al., 2016 ; Ozdamar Ertekin et al., 2020 ; Peake & Kenner, 2020 ; Pedersen & Gwozdz, 2013 ; Thorisdottir & Johannsdottir, 2020 ) and cancer risks due to carcinogenic human toxicity (Haug & Busch, 2015 ; Søndergård et al., 2004 ; UNEP, 2020 ).

Some scholars highlighted sustainability as a megatrend affecting the landscape businesses operate (Park & Kim, 2016 ). Public attention to microplastics, climate change, and modern slavery has created waves of change in the industry. Depending on their ethical and moral stance, consumers started to demand more environmentally and socially sustainable products, which affected the fashion incumbents’ approach to sustainability challenges (Blasi et al., 2020 ; Hong & Kang, 2019 ; Lee et al., 2015 ). Scholars argue that change in this industry would come “both from end-consumers who prefer sustainable offerings and from businesses (of all sizes) who need to offer products and services that will enable more sustainable consumption” (Turunen & Halme, 2021 , p. 2). As a result of increasing consumer demand for more sustainable offerings, incumbents develop interventions in the “design, development, production, distribution, marketing, and consumption of goods may impact multiple stakeholders and simultaneously generate profit for individual companies” (Gaskill-Fox et al., 2014 , p. 1). For instance, they develop and source sustainable fibre alternatives such as bamboo (Muthu, 2017 ; Nayak & Mishra, 2016 ). Fast fashion incumbents integrate sustainability “in all levels of the business (products, technologies, services, new business models, organization model and relationship with stakeholders)” (Niinimäki, 2015 , p. 4). They aim to move towards closed-loop supply chains to cooperate with their suppliers to avoid “damaged products, scraps, and unsold fashion products [going] to a landfill … to properly reuse, remanufacture, and recycle all of them so that some value can be re-generated” (Choi & Li, 2015 , p. 15,401). They develop multi-disciplinary teams to design products drawing on specialist knowledge in various areas, including sustainability knowledge (Claxton & Kent, 2020 ). Still, these efforts are often critiqued and not viewed as sufficient due to greenwashing concerns (Kennedy et al., 2017 ; Niinimäki, 2015 ).

Many scholars hope that the true change in fashion will come from niche players and turn to sustainable entrepreneurship (DiVito & Bohnsack, 2017 ; Heinze, 2020 ; Kozlowski et al., 2018 ; Poldner et al., 2016 ). Here, the expectation is to see novel business models that integrate environmental and social sustainability principles into the core business. Often, such business models move their orientation from profit-making to triple-bottom-line principles (Choi & Li, 2015 ; Hockerts & Wüstenhagen, 2010 ), introducing social equity and nature preservation into organizational decision-making (Elkington, 2013 ).

Developing a multi-level perspective of transitions in this changing and complex industry is beneficial. As our summary of the changes in the fashion above shows, the transition of the industry requires macro (landscape), meso (regime), and micro-level developments (niche). We, therefore, draw on the literature on the multi-level perspective (MLP) in sustainability transitions.

Multi-level perspective (MLP) in sustainability transitions

Transition studies analyse large-scale sociotechnical changes such as technology and practice changes, policies, and relationships between different societal players and institutions (i.e. values and meaning systems) (Geels, 2002 ; Rip & Kemp, 1998 ). There are many different frameworks that transition scholars have developed over time (El Bilali, 2019a ; Lachman, 2013 ); one has been very influential: the Multi-level Perspective (MLP). MLP consists of three analytical concepts: niche, regime, and landscape (Geels, 2002 , 2005 , 2010 ; Schot & Geels, 2008 ). According to Schot and Geels ( 2008 , p. 545), “the core notion of MLP is that transitions come about through interactions between processes at different levels: (a) niche innovations build up internal momentum, (b) changes at the landscape level create pressure on the regime, (c) destabilisation of the regime creates windows of opportunity for niche innovations”.

The landscape forms the macro-level of the MLP. It sets the scene as “the exogenous environment beyond the direct influence of niche and regime players (e.g. macro-economics, deep cultural patterns, macro-political developments)” (Schot & Geels, 2008 , p. 545). The landscape is characterised by relatively slow developments that may take decades of change (El Bilali, 2019a ; Raven et al., 2010 ; Schot & Geels, 2008 ). A recent review clearly demonstrates that landscape is a “background—a scale with no activities”; thus, “it is difficult to define players at the landscape level since their definition in the MLP does not allow for it” (Fischer & Newig, 2016 , p. 6). It is, however, important to emphasise that changes at the landscape level inform the regime and niche players and shape their behaviours. Here, changes at the landscape level mean general technological and cultural trends that are exogenous to the players but shape how they think and behave by providing them with the dominant logics (Fischer & Newig, 2016 ).

The regime forms the meso-level in the MLP. Regimes refer to the dominant practices, technologies and rules that enable and constrain communities' activities (Geels, 2002 ). Rip and Kemp ( 1998 , p. 338) defined a technological regime “as the grammar or rule set comprised in the complex of scientific knowledge, engineering practices, production process technologies, product characteristics, skills and procedures, and institutions and infrastructures that make up the totality of a technology”. Geels ( 2002 ) proposed the term socio-technical regime, which underlines the incumbent sociotechnical system that the niche potentially affects or replaces.

It is possible to identify two types of players in the regime. One is the dominant regime players, the incumbents of a particular industry (Fischer & Newig, 2016 ). The second type is a part of the regime to challenge these incumbents, such as societal pressure groups like NGOs interacting with dominant regime players (Fischer & Newig, 2016 ).

Niches form the micro-level in the MLP (Geels, 2005 ; Rip & Kemp, 1998 ). According to Raven et al., ( 2010 , p. 1), niches “ are a 'space' or 'location' that is protected from the dominant regime, enabling players to develop an innovation, (2) they form the micro-level of technological and social change, (3) they are a new and relatively unstable set of rules and institutions for innovative practices, (4) they are experimental projects, (5) they are a constellation of structures, culture and practices, and (6) they are the variation environment for radical innovations”.

Niche players often replace regime practices and norms (Schot & Geels, 2008 ). The niche concept is often used positively and is a counterpart to regime problems (Raven et al., 2010 ). However, niche players may have diverging or conflicting expectations or even no expectations for regime change and, at times, become sites of dispute and consensus (Lazarevic & Valve, 2020 ; Smith et al., 2010 ). We problematise the overly optimistic framing of niches and propose a distinction between negative and positive impact niches .

We define positive impact niches as locations where radical pro-social and pro-environmental innovations develop and, given the right incentives, can grow and replace the regime practices. Positive impact niches provide a breathing space for players who make path-breaking innovations and impact the regime to shift towards sustainability. Their innovations are deemed essential and thus need nurturing and protection from the dominating incumbents of the regime. An example of such niches is solar PV technology firms (Smith et al., 2014 ).

On the contrary, we define negative impact niches as locations where radical innovations may develop and replace the regime practices towards unsustainability, leading to a negative environmental impact on the socio-ecological systems. While also aiming at regime shifts, negative impact niches hurt the sustainable transition agenda. Some may welcome such entrants due to their path-breaking innovations. However, they may create unintended consequences on the system if these negative niche players replace the regime (Farla et al., 2012 ). Similar to our negative impact niche , Næss and Vogel ( 2012 ) referred to 'unsustainable niches' and emphasised that “the players promoting [unsustainable technologies] and the vested interests they represent seem to be somewhat overlooked in the transition theory literature” (Næss & Vogel, 2012 , p. 43). Therefore, Koistinen et al. ( 2018 ) underlined the importance of regime players to keep such unsustainable niches outside the gate of regimes, highlighting the multi-level interactions within the MLP. Similarly, Lazarevic and Valve ( 2020 ) question which niches should be nurtured and on what grounds.

The MLP framework has received several criticisms to elaborate further on the idea of agency, politics and power (El Bilali, 2019a , 2019b ; Svensson & Nikoleris, 2018 ). Here, one crucial item missing in common MLP frameworks is that niche and regime players are often portrayed as lacking the agency to change the structures that shape them (Fuenfschilling & Truffer, 2014 ). Here, we point to the literature on institutional logic and framing as helpful ways to integrate further with the MLP framework.

Diffusion of institutional logics

Institutional logics are a “socially constructed, historical pattern of material practices, assumptions, values, beliefs and rules by which individuals produce and reproduce their material subsistence, organise time and space and provide meaning to their social reality” (Thornton & Ocasio, 1999 , p. 804). They shape societal structures, field-level practices, organizational forms, and the attentional focus of individuals (Laasch, 2018 ; Thornton & Ocasio, 1999 ; Thornton et al., 2012 ). The distinction between market and sustainability logic is most relevant for conceptualising sustainability transitions.

Market logic drives players to maximise shareholder value (Ashraf et al., 2017 ; De Clercq & Voronov, 2011 ; Saz-Carranza & Longo, 2012 ). Dominated by market logic, players aim to maintain their legitimacy by avoiding fines, keeping in line with customer demands, complying with regulatory frameworks, and prioritising profit maximisation through cost reduction and operational improvements (Dahlmann & Grosvold, 2017 ). Some scholars describe these logics as “transaction-oriented, with profit, self-interest and shareholder value being key for the agency” (Weisenfeld & Hauerwaas, 2018 , p. 912).

Sustainability logic drives players to prioritise environmental and social value creation and preservation of the natural environment and societal well-being (Corbett et al., 2015 ; Dahlmann & Grosvold, 2017 ; Rousseau et al., 2014 ). Herein, by sustainability, we mean organizations' combined efforts to achieve economic prosperity, environmental quality and social equity simultaneously (Dyllick & Hockerts, 2002 ). Herein, when we say sustainability logic, we consider both the environmental and social aspects of sustainability. Generally, sustainability logic does not appear the same at for-profit firms as at non-profits. This is due to the institutional complexity created by the heterogonous exposure to multiple logics (i.e. market and sustainability logics simultaneously) (Laasch & Pinkse, 2019 ). Indeed, Haffar and Searcy ( 2019 ) demonstrate market-led (business case), value-based and holistic manifestations of sustainability logic in businesses, while Laasch and Pinkse ( 2019 ) use the metaphor of 'leopard's spots' to describe institutional complexity.

Institutional logics are exogenous to the players and form the societal antecedents (macro-level) of individual and organizational behaviour (Friedland & Alford, 1991 ). In the MLP framework, the landscape, as the exogenous environment, would host the complex and multiple institutional logics guiding the regime and niche players' meaning-making systems. On their own, however, institutional logics are “analytically removed from the more active struggles over meaning and resources” (Lounsbury et al., 2003 , p. 72), which is why it is essential to explain the framing and framing contests in the MLP framework.

Framing and framing contests

Framing is the act of meaning construction for a specific phenomenon and “involve[s] the ways in which individuals use language or other symbolic gestures in context either to reinforce existing interpretive frames or to call new frames into being” (Cornelissen & Werner, 2014 , pp. 18–19). Framing is “effective in challenging dominant logics and legitimating new organizational forms” (Gurses & Ozcan, 2015 , p. 1713) and, therefore, a way of driving institutional change (Litrico & David, 2017 ).

When different players promote different framings, this may lead to framing contests (Gurses & Ozcan, 2015 ; Kaplan, 2008 ; Pesqueira et al., 2019 ), which is defined as a “struggle over meaning that attempts to influence the interpretative schemes of players involved in a given situation” (Gurses & Ozcan, 2015 , p. 1713). For instance, managers can actively try and shape organizational outcomes through framing contests, often evident when some ideas are vetted, and others are followed due to debates between members that promote different frames (Kaplan, 2008 ). Similarly, entrepreneurs and incumbents also use framing contests as a mechanism through which they “can battle to enable or disable institutional change” (Gurses & Ozcan, 2015 , p. 1704).

Players aim to replace dominant logic through framing since it “involves deliberate communicative acts that shape how individuals perceive, understand, and attach meaning to a given issue” (Bach & Blake, 2015 , p. 1). Players convey their perception of reality by using discursive strategies to promote an issue and engage others in taking action for this issue (Benford & Snow, 2000 ). They give sense to issues to influence others' sensemaking using framing strategies such as symbolic language, metaphors, stock phrases, and idioms (Logemann et al., 2019 ). For instance, entrepreneurs actively use various framing strategies in their interactions with communities, trade associations and networks to push their solutions forward and convince incumbents and regulators toward their ends. Overall this causes a field-level effect and institutional change, sometimes not intentionally but through their battles of legitimation (Gurses & Ozcan, 2015 ).

Framing, and more explicitly, framing contests, are interactional and dynamic; they reflect power relations and ongoing negotiations, thus addressing the need for the MLP framework to incorporate agency, politics and power (El Bilali, 2019a ). Different players propose different frames, leading to framing contests which is a “politically charged process of meaning construction” (Kaplan, 2008 , p. 730).

Six new framings challenge the current fast fashion regime by going beyond eco-efficiency: consistency, degrowth-sufficiency, ethical, slow, circular and sharing, as shown in Table 1 . While some pro-sustainability framings overlap, proponents of these different framings sign up for different actions to shift the regime.

The illustrative case of (un)sustainable fashion transitions

This section combines all the concepts introduced in the previous sections in a single encompassing conceptual framework. Drawing on various examples from the fashion context, we conceptualise five interactions in the MLP framework which we further explain through institutional logics and framing contests. As, Fig.  1 shows, these interactions are between the landscape and regime, landscape and niche, regime and niche, between different regime players, and between niche players.

Our conceptual framework 1a The impact of landscape on regime level. 2a The impact of landscape on niche level. 3a The impact of regime on niche level. 1b The impact of regime on landscape level. 2b The impact of niche on landscape level. 3b The impact of niche on regime level. 4 Regime interactions (between different regime actors). 5 Niche interactions (between different niche actors). Framing contest, Cooperative framing, Competitive framing. White arrow , Landscape developments for sustainability. Black arrow , Landscape developments for unsustainability. +, Positive impact niches. -, Negative impact niches. Solid arrow is used to describe cooperative framing, Dotted arrow is used to describe competitive framing, Z shaped arrow is used to describe the framing contests

Landscape-regime interactions

Landscape-regime interactions (1a).

Currently, landscape change is occurring due to global trends such as demographic developments (population growth and increasing global wealth), the increased use of resources, the consumerist culture, digitalisation, and the urgency to respond to environmental problems and climate change (Buchel et al., 2018 , pp. 12–13). We draw on these changes in fashion and explain how these landscape changes have affected the dominant regime and institutional logics.

Before the nineteenth century, it was possible to characterise the clothing industry with general material scarcity and hand-made production, which meant highly-priced pieces of clothing that were expensive to purchase (Ozdamar Ertekin et al., 2020 ). The Industrial Revolution enabled a significant change. Thanks to the industrialisation wave, which led to the development of the first textile factories in Britain, an industry dominated by tailors and the logic of profession (tailoring) transitioned into the ready-made clothing industry with reduced costs, making clothes easier to access than before (Godley, 2013 ).

Still, Haute Couture defined the trends for a long time (Ozdamar Ertekin et al., 2020 ) even though the clothing industry's industrialisation continued. Until the 1980s, the industry was organised to respond to customer demands forecasting their expectations for two seasons, a much slower market speed when compared to today (Bhardwaj & Fairhurst, 2010 ). Today's giants, Zara and H&M, were considered regional niche players then. In this period, the regime was also a complex field whereby multiple logics such as the logics of the profession (tailoring), art/design and market competed. Amongst others, however, the logic of art/design was central, “mostly concerned with creating innovative and influential trends,” and was associated with “small-scale, labour-intensive production of artistic products” (Ozdamar Ertekin et al., 2020 , p. 1451).

Another wave of change in the industry increased market speed tremendously, starting as a niche and quickly gaining the fashion regime's dominance: fast fashion. In the 80 s, fast fashion—“low-cost clothing collections based on current, high-cost luxury fashion trends” (Joy et al., 2015 , p. 275)—gained dominance. This meant the “standard turnaround time from the catwalk to consumer of six months (…) [has been] compressed to a matter of mere weeks by such companies as H&M and Zara, with heightened profits to match” (Joy et al., 2015 , p. 275). H&M and Zara developed business models aligned with the market logic, increased speed to market, reduced costs and improved price performance (Fuenfschilling & Truffer, 2014 ; Ozdamar Ertekin et al., 2020 ). They integrated the design and sales and outsourced production to low-wage suppliers in the developing world (Crofton & Dopico, 2007 ). The market logic dominated fast fashion model diffused as these models proved a financial success, forcing even the previous Haute Couture players to integrate practices of market logic further to remain legitimate. Gradually, the regional niche players of the 60 s and 70 s—like Zara and H&M—became dominant regime players.

Scholars suggest that “the salience of the influence of market logic, in particular, has risen over the last 30 years” (Thornton et al., 2012 , p. 12). “Market logic spread over many socio-technical systems when neoliberal politics became popular in western countries during the 1980s” (Franco-Torres et al., 2020 , p. 36). Not surprisingly, this also corresponded with the rise of fast fashion as the regime. As the trade quotas for textiles and clothing were removed in the 90 s, textile value chains changed fundamentally (Mair et al., 2016 ). Fast fashion utilised these global supply chains that provided cheap labour and access to markets, leading to “the exploitation of Third World labour for the benefit of the leading Western brands” (Simona Segre, 2015 , p. 45).

Unfortunately, the fast fashion transition brought societal and environmental problems worth mentioning. The globalisation of the textile value chains came at a high societal price as workers in the developing world suffered poor conditions in unsafe sweatshops with long working hours and low pay (Heinze, 2020 ; Ozdamar Ertekin et al., 2020 ; Simona Segre, 2015 ). Fast fashion has been associated with child labour, modern slavery, and significant health and safety problems (Lueg et al., 2015 ; Peake & Kenner, 2020 ), as we listed earlier. Thus, these issues led to the rise of social sustainability logic in fashion , initially dominating the niche players and later also adopted by some regime players.

Fast fashion has also created a system whereby disposability became favourable over durability (Joy et al., 2015 ), creating a throwaway culture resulting in mountains of waste (Freudenreich & Schaltegger, 2020 ; Niinimäki et al., 2020 ; Thorisdottir & Johannsdottir, 2020 ). Overall, the rise of fast fashion led to higher energy and water consumption levels, chemical pollution, soil degradation, and increased carbon footprint (Shirvanimoghaddam et al., 2020 ), thus leading to the rise of environmental sustainability logic in fashion , also initially dominating the niche players and later adopted by the regime players.

The negative impacts of fast fashion came under the spotlight when a tragic field reconfiguring event occurred: the collapse of Rana Plaza, which killed 1129 workers and left 2,500 injured (Lohmeyer & Schüßler, 2017 ; Williamson & Lutz, 2019 ). Rana Plaza shook the grounds of the dominant market logic and reinforced the legitimacy of sustainability logic further. The workers who lost their lives were producing for well-known brands involved in fast fashion, such as Walmart and Primark (Reinecke & Donaghey, 2015 ). The Rana Plaza tragedy made it visible that the dominant fashion regime was built on the assumption of infinite growth, strengthened by the craze to buy affordable clothing and the industry's fragmented structure that was based on globalisation and power imbalance between the Global North and South (Buchel et al., 2018 ).

The Rana Plaza tragedy, therefore, triggered regime changes. For instance, H&M implemented a Conscious Action sustainability initiative to use and promote ecological materials, cleaner production processes, and conduct consumer awareness campaigns (Shen, 2014 ). H&M's sustainability manager Giorgina Waltier recently argued that “the fashion industry cannot continue to operate in the way it does currently; our planet does not have the resources” (Chan, 2019 ). However, most incumbents are yet to go beyond eco-efficiency framing, which “aims to either reduce resource use to produce the same output or produce more clothes with a given amount of resources as input” (Freudenreich & Schaltegger, 2020 , p. 1).

Post-Rana plaza, policy environment and the proactive regime players needed to enact sustainability logic to remain legitimate . Sustainability logic diffused into the regime through certification schemes and norm-setting institutions (Smink et al., 2015a , 2015b ). To a greater degree, sustainability logic is also diffused thanks to policy and governance initiatives that affect regime reconfigurations (Roesler & Hassler, 2019 ). For instance, the Bangladesh Accord and the Sustainability Compact could be governance developments post-Rana Plaza (Bair et al., 2020 ; Siddiqui et al., 2020 ). Similarly, Fashion Revolution – founded post-Rana Plaza collapse, started to create further awareness by developing transparency ratings for brands’ supply chains (Monroe, 2021 ).

Based on the above, we argue the following:

Interaction 1a—Landscape diffuses market and sustainability logics to the regime players through various norm-setting institutions, providing institutional complexity at the regime level.

Regime–landscape interactions (1b)

Regime players can either engage in framing to legitimise or delegitimise sustainable practices. It is difficult to imagine that a single regime player would impact the landscape, characterised by long-term historical developments and trends. However, coalitions formed between different regime players can influence the regime either positively or negatively, depending on the implications in terms of sustainability impact. In other words, it is possible to differentiate between regime coalitions that are protagonists or antagonists based on their sustainability orientation (Lempiälä et al., 2019 ). While niche players may also be involved in such coalitions, in the examples from fashion, the coalitions mainly were dominated by the regime players.

Regime incumbents in the fashion system formed a few protagonist coalitions and networks. Fashion for Good, initially founded by the C&A foundation—today called Laudes foundation—engages in social entrepreneurship and philanthropy as part of the European clothing group C&A (Laudes Foundation, 2021 ). Fashion for Good legitimises circular pro-sustainability framing backed by other industry incumbents like Kering, PVH Corp., and Adidas (Fashion for Good, 2021 ). Partnership for Sustainable Textiles—founded in October 2014 in response to the deadly accidents in textile factories in Bangladesh and Pakistan, was initiated by the German Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development. This multi-stakeholder platform aims to guide the development of international agreements, setting frameworks and defining principles, allowing members to push their ethical fashion framing (Partnership for Sustainable Textiles, 2021 ). Global Fashion Agenda promotes circular fashion framing post-Covid crisis (D’Adamo & Lupi, 2021 ). These protagonist coalitions show that regime players provide their (often aligned with eco-efficiency, as explained earlier) framing to others in their field, legitimise themselves and their practices, and gradually aim to shift dominant logic in alignment with their interests, affecting landscape-level in the long run.

The regime, however, is a complex field. Hence, while fast-fashion incumbents join the networks and platforms mentioned above in alignment with the environmental and social sustainability logic, such initiatives are often critiqued for buried corporate interests and greenwashing (Partzsch et al., 2019 ). Some scholars argued that such coalitions might undermine the most crucial sustainability requirements and provide solutions that corporations determine to the degree they can invest in such initiatives (Partzsch et al., 2019 ). While we could not identify a specific antagonist regime coalition that rejects the sustainable development agenda or actively delegitimises it, it is evident that regime players would provide a framing that would not clash with the market logic . For instance, several fast-fashion brands have recently been scrutinised in the UK due to their business model. These companies actively defended their business model, which is based on cheapness of items and the fastness of delivery, often at the cost of employee well-being and fair supplier cooperation (Eley, 2018 ). This is also evident in the recent fallout between the Norwegian Consumer Authority and H&M. The Norwegian authorities blamed the global brand for greenwashing. They found H&M’s Conscious collection marketing misleading statements on sustainability credentials (Hitti, 2019 ). Bente Øverli, deputy director-general at Norway’s Consumer Authority, argued that “H&M [is] not being clear or specific enough in explaining how the clothes in the Conscious collection and their Conscious shop are more sustainable than other products they sell…Since H&M [is] not giving the consumer precise information about why these clothes are labelled Conscious, we conclude that consumers are being given the impression that these products are more sustainable than they actually are” (Dwyer, 2019 ).

Most regime players would engage with sustainability through the lens of 'business case' in a more instrumental manner (Gao & Bansal, 2012 ; Hahn et al., 2015 ; Joseph et al., 2019 ). Thus, it is important to highlight that we do not propose pure sustainability or market logic, but rather highlight that the field is complex, and regime players are exposed to both logics simultaneously. While slow and sustainable fashion developments have presented various alternatives at the niche level, “the challenge now is extending the slow concept on a larger scale”; hence the regime's transition to sustainable fashion (Clark, 2015 , p. 444).

Interaction 1b—Regime players provide their framings to shift or reinforce the dominant logic in the landscape using the space of protagonist or antagonist coalitions. Protagonist coalitions may provide eco-efficiency framings to shift the dominant market logic in the landscape that guides the regime practices. However, this may entail greenwashing if and when the corporate action and language are decoupled. Antagonist coalitions may provide fastness and ultra-fastness framing further to reinforce the legitimacy of market logic in the landscape. Negative impact niches may also provide eco-efficiency framings to legitimise their practices and operations.

Landscape-niche interactions

Like protagonist and antagonist regime coalitions, it is vital to highlight the distinctions between negative and positive impact niches, as we explained earlier. Like the regime players, niche players operate in an institutionally complex environment where both environmental and social sustainability logic, as well as the market logic, guide beliefs, norms and practices. However, negative and positive impact niches are predominantly guided by one logic more than the other (i.e. demonstrating one dominant logic rather than being impacted by both logics equally).

Landscape–Niche Interactions (2a)

Market logic dominates the negative impact niches . An example of a negative impact niche in the fashion industry is ultra-fast fashion that “can bring products from design to sale in as little as a few days, focusing on rapidly responding to consumers' increasing demands for immediacy and fashionable innovation” (Camargo et al., 2020 , p. 538). Ultra-fast fashion players like Boohoo and Shein use digital technologies to gather and utilise big data on consumer behaviour, personalise shoppers' experiences, and heavily draw on social media and influencers (Monroe, 2021 ). Even during the Covid-19 crisis, these companies were reportedly “quick to capitalise on Covid-19 as an opportunity to boost sales, but had paid little attention to low wages and unsafe working conditions in its suppliers' factories […and] growth and profit were prioritised to the extent that the company lost sight of other issues” (Monroe, 2021 , p. 2). A recent article in the Guardian demonstrates how these ultra-fast fashion players, such as Shein, exacerbate the problem of unsustainable consumerism while being responsible for environmental and social sustainability problems. For instance, “some workers at factories supplying Shein reported working more than 75 h a week. In one of them, workers got one day off a month” (Mahmood, 2022 ). These niche players maintain legitimacy as their operations and business models align with market logic which has dominated the fast fashion regime in decades.

Some negative impact niches may not appear negative at first sight. However, they still operate in alignment with the market logic. An example is platforms such as Depop, which may be regarded as “important services that can drive the [circular economy] for fashion” by some scholars (Manieson et al., 2021 , p. 342). However, the same platform can also be critiqued for its social implications, as it still encourages unsustainable consumption, leads to fashion addiction and exacerbates social inequality and gender issues (Hitchings-Hales, 2021 ; Lieber, 2019 ; Mahmood, 2022 ). Here, too, we observe that while some niche players may posit themselves as more sustainable compared to the regime players, these niche players also carry attributes of the dominant market logic in various ways and, unfortunately, reinforce unsustainable and unethical consumption patterns, exacerbating both environmental and social challenges.

On the other hand, s ustainability logic dominates the positive impact niches. However, sustainable fashion players within the positive impact niches must satisfy the economic bottom line to ensure funding and maintain operations whilst creating a positive impact aligned with their mission (Illge & Preuss, 2012 ). This is why clashes between different logics are often observed in sustainable business models (Bidmon & Knab, 2018 ; Smink et al., 2015a , 2015b ). This is also evident in the work of sustainable fashion entrepreneurs, who are often challenged by the conflicting demands of maintaining a financially successful business while at the same time aligning this business with their ethical and sustainable values (Heinze, 2020 ). Indeed, a recent study portrays how sustainable fashion entrepreneurs experience financial precarity and tension “between pro-social motives and more traditional, masculine or “gladiatorial” entrepreneurial tendencies […] that privilege competitiveness and financial reward, offering another component of emotional complexity experienced by [sustainable fashion] entrepreneurs”. Therefore, the growing literature on social/environmental enterprises explores mission drifts—“the risk of losing sight of their social missions in their efforts to generate revenue” (Ebrahim et al., 2014 , p. 82). Mission drifts demonstrate that positive impact niche players face the risk of drifting apart from their missions if market logic gains dominance.

Interaction 2a—Landscape diffuses market and sustainability logics to the regime players, providing institutional complexity at the niche level. While market logic dominates negative impact niches, i.e. ultra-fast fashion, sustainability logic dominates the positive impact niches. However, positive impact niches face the risk of mission drifts due to the tensions embedded in their business model that reflect the contradictions between market and sustainability logics.

Niche–landscape interactions (2b)

In response to the environmental and social challenges brought by the fast fashion regime, positive impact niche players emerged in recent years to challenge the dominant practices and norms with novel business models (Lueg et al., 2015 ; Stål & Corvellec, 2018 ). Earlier, we introduced six framings of these positive impact niches that challenge the fast-fashion regime. We observe many players within the positive niches that engage in these framings, demonstrating alignment with the sustainability logic, albeit diagnosing different aspects of fast fashion as problematic or proposing alternative solutions to the challenges faced by the fashion industry. Drawing on consistency framing , California Cloth Foundry legitimises itself by suggesting that “our skin absorbs what we put on it” and hence, “[they] choose only botanical ingredients and avoid all petrol-based fibres, treatments and dyes” (California Cloth Foundry, 2021 ). Utilising the degrowth or sufficiency framing , Petit Pli designs children's clothing items considering the growth rate of children using new materials that enable continuous size adjustments, aiming to reduce the consumption of children's clothing through degrowth principles. Abrazo Style—a company that promotes ethical framing , describes its products as “fairly traded, quality, hand embroidered, 100% cotton Mexican apparel in contemporary fabrics and designs” (Style, 2021 ). Similarly, other sustainability entrepreneurs use ethical framing to highlight the social dimension of sustainability and emphasise providing jobs for communities and local economies guided by social inequalities in their businesses (Su et al., 2022 ). Advocating slow framing , the Tiny Closet creates clothing from outsourced/deadstock fabric while ensuring all pieces are made to order, thereby aligning itself with the principles of slow fashion (Wardrobe Oxygen, 2021 ). Using deadstock fabric also aligns itself with the other framing: circular. Promoting circular framing , Pure Waste produces clothing items from waste fabric (Pure Waste, 2021 ), and Nuw provides a social network to share clothes with people in your local community and extend the life cycle of our wardrobes (Nuw, 2021 ).

Unlike the positive impact niches, however, the negative impact niches, like ultra-fast fashion, may further reinforce the legitimacy of market logic with an unsustainable framing of ‘ultra-fastness’ demonstrating an alignment with the market logic . They engage in discursive battles to hook customers to buy more with aggressive online engagement and an abundance of style while at the same time staying efficient with a small inventory and no brick-and-mortar stores (Camargo et al., 2020 ; Monroe, 2021 ). In an interview, Carol Kane and Mahmud Kamani, the co-founders of Boohoo, explain the foundations of their business by suggesting they saw the internet as a way “to cut out the middleman and market directly to customers” and in 2006, they set up Boohoo. The partnership [between Kane and Kamani] covered all the bases: [Kamani] had the money, while Ms Kane knew the industry and the tastes of fashionable young women” (Lewis, 2020 ). Thus, the foundations of these businesses already reflect the dominant market logics. However, while sustainability logic may not dominate ultra-fast fashion players, they may also engage in eco-efficiency framing from time to time. Since they, too, are exposed to sustainability logics. For instance, Boohoo announced a collaboration with media personality Kourtney Kardashian Barker and launched new collections focusing on sustainability. However, “many accused Boohoo and Kourtney of greenwashing—which is when a company positions itself as being environmentally friendly in marketing but lacks eco-conscious practices” (Wheeler, 2022 ).

Interaction 2b—Niche players provide their framings to shift or reinforce the dominant logic in the landscape. Positive impact niches provide their pro-sustainability framings (consistency, degrowth-sufficiency, ethical, slow, circular and sharing) to shift the dominant market logic in the landscape that guides the regime practices. Negative impact niches provide framings, like ultra-fastness, to further reinforce the legitimacy of market logic in the landscape. Negative impact niches may also provide eco-efficiency framings to legitimise their practices and operations. However, this may entail greenwashing if and when the corporate action and language are decoupled.

Regime-Niche Interactions (3a&b)

Based on examples from fashion, the nature of relationships between the regime and niche players can be characterised as coopetitive because we observe that regime and niche players engage both in cooperative and competitive framing. Regimes and niches may copy the framings of the niches or position themselves as competitors to some niches, which we refer to as competitive framing. Alternatively, both regime and niche players may collaborate with each other and position themselves as partners (Dzhengiz et al. 2023 ), which we refer to as cooperative framing.

The tragic Rana Plaza event and the regulatory environment, such as the EU circular economy regulations, pushed the fast fashion incumbents to partially adjust to the niche instead of heavily investing in the current paradigm. H&M joined forces with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and committed to a 100% circular vision with the “goal to only use recycled or other sustainably sourced materials by 2030” (H&M, 2017 ). They added that “[they] are aware that [this] vision means a big change from on how fashion is made and enjoyed today and if [they] want to take the lead in this challenge” (H&M, 2017 ). A similar player is VF Corporation, which introduced takeback systems to reuse and recycle their products (VF Corp., 2017 ). These show that fast fashion incumbents are copying the pro-sustainability framings of niche players and getting into direct competition with many positive impact niche players, thus engaging in competitive framing. Because, due to these initiatives, they can communicate with the consumer where they are as the industry’s incumbents regarding sustainability and target a portion of the market for environmentally conscious consumers.

Positive impact niches may also use competitive framing to legitimise themselves and their sustainable technologies or business models (Kishna et al., 2017 ). They use various discursive strategies to delegitimise the regime players framing the regime “as insufficient, outdated, irresponsible, or unacceptable” (Geels, 2010 , p. 506). For instance, the founder of Nuw highlights that “[she] was angry and frustrated that [she] had been so complicit in an industry that caused so much harm, and [she] was heartbroken because [she] did not feel [she] could enjoy fashion without contributing to the problem” (Nuw, 2021 ). Similarly, Batshava Hay, an entrepreneur that focuses on recycling existing fabrics to produce new clothes, reminds us that “[their] main issue is with companies like H&M pushing such huge quantities of cheap clothing by calling it sustainable, yet in the end, they are still producing a massive collective waste…the focus should really be on buying less and wearing what you own over and over again, rather than buying too much cheap, disposable clothing” (Dixon, 2019 ). Here, we observed the delegitimisation efforts of positive impact niches as a response to the uptake of sustainability logic by the regime players, using a competitive framing.

On the other hand, competition with the fast fashion regime is fierce for negative impact niches. Boohoo, the ultra-fast player, recently bought brands such as Debenhams and Dorothy Perkins. Its executive chairman, Mahmud Kamani, said ("Debenhams shops to close permanently after Boohoo deal," 2021 ): "This is a transformational deal for the group, which allows us to capture the fantastic opportunity as e-commerce continues to grow. Our ambition is to create the UK's largest marketplace.[…] Our acquisition of the Debenhams brand is strategically significant as it represents a huge step which accelerates our ambition to be a leader, not just in fashion e-commerce, but in new categories including beauty, sport and homeware." As the statement shows, strategies such as mergers and acquisitions and demonstrating interest in market leadership through competitive framing show the efforts of negative impact niches acting upon the dominant market logic to shape the regime further using a competitive framing.

The relationship between niche and regime players is complex due to their horizontal and diagonal linkages (Ingram, 2015 ). The dynamics, therefore, are not always competitive. Sometimes, “incumbent players lose faith in the regime due to much landscape pressure and no longer defend the regime” (Smink et al., 2015a , 2015b , p. 88). Such appears to be the case in fast fashion. We identified several examples of cooperative interactions: strategic alliances between the regime and niche players and innovation ecosystems whereby incumbents develop, fund, and cooperate with startups. For instance, Lenzing and H&M joined forces for the Conscious Collections in 2011. H&M uses Lenzing's Tencel branded Lyocell fibres- based on a niche technology that produces fibres from natural wood pulp from sustainable tree farms and biomass (H&M, 2017 ). H&M also partnered with I: Co, which collects clothing and footwear for reuse and recycling (Reuters, 2019 ). Bext360, a blockchain startup, partnered with various regime incumbents such as C&A, Zalando, PVH Corp and the Kering Group to pilot their blockchain technology to track and trace the value chain of organic cotton (Knapp, 2019 ). Kering—the global fashion conglomerate with a portfolio of Gucci, Saint Laurent, and Balenciaga brands—is working with the startup accelerator Plug and Play to launch the Kering Sustainable Innovation Award. This award aims “to boost Chinese startups with the potential to bring a positive environmental and social impact to the apparel and textile industries” (van Elven, 2018 ). In summary, incumbents employ competitive strategies by adjusting slowly and copying the strategies of positive impact niche players that demonstrate novel pro-sustainable framings. Simultaneously, they collaborate with and enable the development of positive impact niche players, which is a helpful strategy to remain competitive, as the legitimacy of positive niche players enhances over time.

Interaction 3a*- Regime players may copy the pro-sustainability framings (i.e. circular framing) of positive impact niches by engaging in competitive framing, reinforcing the legitimacy of sustainability logic. Regime players may also engage with cooperative framing and actively collaborate with positive impact niches, reinforcing the legitimacy of sustainability logic.

Interaction 3b*- Positive impact niche players may use competitive framing to infiltrate the regime and gain dominance by delegitimising dominant regime players through an emphasis on how the market logic still dominates the regime players, which is evident in various examples of greenwashing of regime players. Alternatively, some positive impact niche players may also engage with cooperative framing and even actively collaborate with regime players to infiltrate the regime and gain dominance. Negative impact niche players may use competitive framing and engage in strategic moves, such as mergers and acquisitions aligned with the market logic, to further shape regime practices, infiltrate the regime, and gain dominance.

Regime interactions (4)

Examples from fast fashion demonstrate that the regime is filled with persistent institutional tensions and contradictions amongst the players, which is reflected in various controversies and framing contests. For instance, in 2021, the International Sericultural Commission (ISC), an inter-governmental organization that aims to develop the silk industry worldwide, registered an official complaint to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) about silk's score on the Higg Index of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (Mathews, 2020 ). Higg Index is a standardised measurement of value chain sustainability (Sustainable Apparel Coalition, 2021 ). Sustainable Apparel Coalition helps fast-fashion players legitimise their eco-efficiency framing by developing the Higg Index to measure and reduce sustainability impacts in the textile value chain (Sustainable Apparel Coalition, 2021 ). The complaint claimed that silk as a fibre is unfairly and inaccurately represented on the Higg Material Sustainability Index (MSI). This shows that there are framing contests in the fast fashion regime due to controversies over the sustainability of different materials.

Similar framing contests have also been observed regarding plastic-based fibres' sustainability and environmental impacts, e.g. polyester. The Fossil Fashion report, produced by the Changing Markets Foundation, showed that more than half of all textiles produced globally contain polyester, which”bare [many] challenges of recycling once it has been blended with other materials”; thus,”the contribution of fast fashion to waste and of the microplastic pollution which synthetic clothing sheds when washed” (Edie Newsroom, 2021 ). This report challenged fast fashion incumbents of the regime, such as Nike, H&M, Primark and Zara, by revealing that” clothes made from recycled plastic bottles are just as damaging to the environment” ().

Thus, independent nonprofits and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) played an essential role in these regime dynamics (Fischer & Newig, 2016 ). Another example is the Clean Clothes Campaign which “repeatedly addressed moral and ethical aspects in fashion production [..] and put pressure on fashion companies to minimize negative social and environmental impacts” (Beyer & Arnold, 2022 , p. 46). Here, the emotional framing efforts of NGOs (Dzhengiz et al., 2021 ) can be effective in further pushing the dominant companies in the regime to further enhance their social and environmental sustainability standards, for instance. Another campaign as such is the Detox campaign of Greenpeace. For instance, Adidas has been scrutinised by Greenpeace “even after the company’s commitment to [Greenpeace] detox campaign and only after setting a credible roadmap, has [Greenpeace] announced these commitments as a victory for the industry” (Dzhengiz et al., 2021 , p. 2477). Here, NGOs such as Greenpeace are not dominant regime players (like the incumbents of fast fashion). However, they act as challengers to shift the regime dynamics by interacting with other regime players through campaigns.

Alternatively, regime players may act aligned, as mentioned earlier in the regime coalitions. Industry-policy cooperations, voluntary agreements, and commitments are also common in fashion. For example, Textiles 2030 is a voluntary agreement for the fashion industry to transform industry practices by reducing companies’ impacts on climate change, whereby many dominant regime players such as Marks and Spencers, Primark, and Next are members (WRAP, 2021 ). Another example focuses on a social sustainability issue, labour conditions. The Better Work Programme, organised by International Labour Organization and International Finance Corporation, invites textile factories to improve working conditions with a vision to lift people out of poverty in the global garment industry by providing decent work, empowering women and promoting inclusive economic growth (Better Work, 2022 ). We provided several examples of these kinds of protagonist coalitions in fast fashion earlier to explain how through these coalitions, they provide their framing to shift or influence the dominant logics in the landscape. Here, we further add that such coalitions provide a space to negotiate over the different pro-sustainability framings of different regime players, thus also a platform for regime interactions.

Interaction 4- Regime players may propose misaligned framings, thus leading to framing contests. Alternatively, they may propose aligned framings, leading to coalitions, whether protagonist or antagonist.

Niche Interactions (5)

In the context of fast fashion, we introduced positive impact niches that engage with pro-sustainability framings (consistency, degrowth-sufficiency, ethical, slow, circular and sharing) and negative impact niches that engage with unsustainable framings (i.e. ultra-fast fashion). Both negative and positive impact niches interact amongst and with each other to some degree.

Recently, ultra-fast fashion started infiltrating the dominant regime, even threatening the dominant regime players such as H&M and Zara with their ultra-fast offerings (Monroe, 2021 ). As a niche, ultra-fast fashion threatens the viability of rising pro-sustainable framings of positive niche players. The overconsumption embedded in the business models of ultra-fast-fashion players like Shein or Boohoo is viewed as fundamentally unsustainable and unethical (Nguyen, 2021 ). Positive impact niches, through their pro-sustainable framings that aim to address the environmental and social sustainability challenges, compete with the negative impact niches' unsustainable framing. For instance, some critics argue that the ultra-fast negative impact niches promote the linear economy, often discard the ethical dimension of designing and marketing products, neglect paying fair wages to workers, and are associated with poor working conditions in their supply chains (Kent, 2020 ). This controversy between the existing niches is seen in social media, where “sustainable fashion influencers are competing with a major force capturing the attention of Generation Z and millennial women: the ultra-fast fashion industry” (Birenbaum, 2021 ). Also, many entrepreneurs, like Tom Cridland, are fighting against ultra-fast fashion, offering durable products, and challenging the notion of ultra-fastness with quality, durability, and sustainability (Ford, 2019 ). Cridland offers the ‘30 Year Collection’ as an antidote to fast and ultra-fast fashion and encourages customers to “hold on to [their] clothing for a lifetime” (Ford, 2019 ). Another sustainability entrepreneur, Anne-Marie Tomchak, critiques the Instagram and Tiktok marketing heavily adopted by ultra-fast fashion players such as Boohoo and Shein and says that “I am personally of the view that the advertising model around social media is contributing to climate change because it has led to the acceleration of fast fashion” (). Here, we observe how positive impact niche players may contradict and challenge negative impact niche players through framing the unsustainability of the business models that rely on ultra-fastness.

Between different positive impact niche operators, cooperative framings are also in play. A British blogger Francesca Willow reported about cooperation around the sustainable clothing bloggers and brands (Willow, 2017 ): “We do not believe in competition in our community (we like each other too much for a start), so we decided to join forces, bringing together our resources and ideas—enabling us to talk about brands we believe are making a difference, whilst also getting the chance to work together.”

In the context of new sustainable material innovations, Finland has been reported to build up an entrepreneurial ecosystem around cellulosic textiles. “Collaboration across the value chain has been essential for accelerating innovations,” says Dr. Solveig Roschier from Gaia Consulting (Business Finland, 2018 ). This is not to say that positive impact niches would not also have competing framings. As the definitions in Table 1 showed earlier, the proponents of different pro-sustainable framings may prioritise different issues. For instance, while ethical framing prioritises the social dimension of sustainability, circular framing prioritises resource use and circulation. We were able to identify examples between positive and negative impact niches and cooperative framings amongst positive impact niche players and competitive framings amongst positive impact niche players. However, we could not find examples of cooperative and competitive framings between different negative impact niche players. While these relationships may exist in real life, we are limited in searching for cases representing these relationships.

Interaction 5- Positive impact niche players may use competitive framing and engage in framing contests to infiltrate the regime and gain dominance by delegitimising negative impact niche players through an emphasis on the unsustainability of ultra-fast fashion business models relying on market logic. Alternatively, some positive impact niche players may also engage with cooperative framing and even actively collaborate with each other to infiltrate the regime and gain dominance.

Based on the illustrative case of (un)sustainable transitions in fashion, we built a conceptual framework, as shown in Fig.  1 and proposed several arguments in the previous section supporting this framework. In this section, we further explain how our framework resonated with the extant MLP literature and in what ways the illustrative case of fashion transitions helped us further expand the existing conversation on MLP and sustainability transitions. We do so by discussing each interaction we detailed with various examples in the previous section. We conceptualised five distinct interactions between landscape and regime players, landscape and niche players, regime and niche players, amongst different regime players and niches.

Figure  1 demonstrates two interactions between the landscape and the regime players (1a and 1b). One (1a) focuses on the diffusion of complex and heterogenous institutional logics, both market and environmental and social sustainability logics, to dominant regime players. This interaction aligns with the existing transition literature that focuses on the MLP. For instance, Geels and Kemp ( 2007 , p. 446) highlight that “landscape developments create pressure on the regime, leading to major problems”. They argue that while regime players try to react to landscape developments with incremental changes, they often cannot fully solve the problems; hence, niche players find a window of opportunity (Geels & Kemp, 2007 ). They further argue that landscape-regime interactions provide room for socio-technical transitions; however, they also highlight that the landscape changes over a long time.

The other interaction between landscape and regime (1b) emphasises the agency of regime players to influence the landscape by legitimising different logics through their own framing efforts, often through developing protagonist or antagonist regime coalitions. Scholars highlight that “institutions also depend on agency; [since] institutions are constructed by the very same players” (Smink et al., 2015a , 2015b , p. 89). This agency is thanks to regime players' framing efforts which give sense to other stakeholders and push their meaning systems at the landscape level. A recent article by Geels ( 2020 , p. 9) captures this interaction as “structural elaboration”, which he defines as ‘upward’ actions that reproduce existing institutions ("morphostasis") or transform them ("morphogenesis")”. He notes that such agency can often be attributed to institutional entrepreneurship of professional societies, industry associations, and standardization organizations. In the case of fashion, such organizations include but are not limited to Fashion for Good, Partnership for Sustainable Textiles, and Sustainable Apparel Coalition. Still, we find that while Geels ( 2020 ) recently captured this agency of such organizations to influence the landscape, MLP literature overall did not focus much on how these organizations would be able to do so by using various framing strategies. Here, we believe our paper can start a new conversation by inviting other scholars to explore the role of agency through protagonist and antagonist coalitions.

Figure  1 demonstrates two interactions between the landscape and the niche players (2a and 2b). Like in the landscape-regime interactions, we also include both the top-down and the bottom-up dynamics. One interaction focuses on the diffusion of complex and heterogenous institutional logics, both market and environmental and social sustainability logics, to positive and negative niche players in a top-down fashion. Albeit differently because we explain positive and negative niches are dominated by one logic more than the other (sustainability logic for positive niche, market logic for negative niche). Thus, the landscape also shapes the niche level through market and sustainability logic diffusion. Therefore, like the regime, niche players also operate in institutional complexity. Niche players also influence the landscape by framing to give sense to other stakeholders and push their meaning systems at the landscape level. MLP framework also acknowledges that the discursive activities of niche players (i.e. framing) “eventually result in cultural repertoires at the landscape level” (Koistinen et al., 2018 , p. 113). However, as El Bilali ( 2019b , p. 358) highlights, with a few exceptions like Koistinen et al. ( 2018 ), MLP literature also often emphasises how the landscape provides the structure for niche players, and there is “more room for agency within the MLP.”

Figure  1 also demonstrates the regime and niche players' interactions, focusing on the competitive and cooperative framing dynamics. We explain that both positive and negative niche and regime players engage with competitive or cooperative framing to gain or maintain regime dominance. Again, these competitive and cooperative framing efforts also capture how regime and niche players actively use different framing strategies and contests to either remain legitimate and relevant (for regime incumbents) or to gain legitimacy to dominate the regime (for niche). Especially the niche players are trying to replace the regime, especially as a dominant framing emerges from framing contests between different niche alternatives (3a). On the other hand, regime players aim to maintain their legitimacy in the face of public scrutiny due to scandals and greenwashing accusations by adopting the eco-efficiency framing, which aims to combine the market logic and sustainability logic, respectively, through a business case approach (3b).

Here, our findings from fashion transitions resonate with the transitions literature which gave significant attention to regime-niche interactions. This literature posited that as the niche network expands, the new offering of the niches gains significant market share (Geels & Schot, 2007 ). Therefore, regime-niche interactions are often viewed as competitive. Regimes may resist niche players by using their power to access resources (Koistinen et al., 2018 ). This resistance is often viewed when they heavily invest in the current paradigm or partially adjust to niches (Smink et al., 2015a , 2015b ). For instance, the regime may use the financial system to control which niche innovations would receive future investments, highlighting that only those niche players that fit or conform with the regime would gain sufficient legitimacy to replace the regime (Geddes & Schmidt, 2020 ). Regime players may respond to niches through de-alignment strategies that are competitive and defensive and re-alignment strategies that are cooperative and proactive (Smink et al., 2015a , 2015b ). Thus, our findings add to the literature on MLP in transitions by showing that regime-niche dynamics are indeed coopetitive.

Figure  1 also demonstrates interactions within the regime by demonstrating how regime players may have framings that align with each other, which may result in regime coalitions, whether protagonist or antagonist. They may also posit misaligned framings, which may compete with each other, even clash, resulting in framing contests. Literature on transitions also portrayed regimes as semi-coherent entities that entail endogenous sources of change due to multiple institutional logics that offer different behavioural rationalities (Runhaar et al., 2020 ). Thus, our proposal of regimes as a framing contest field demonstrates alignment with the extant literature. Joining Fuenfschilling and Truffer ( 2014 ), we also argue that regimes are filled with persistent institutional tensions and contradictions amongst the players. In the fast fashion regime, we demonstrated these contradictions, especially in the recent controversies about different materials, including silk and polyester which destabilised the regime and many dominant regime players are still unable to clearly defend their position (for instance, for marketing recycled polyester as sustainable and green).

Finally, Fig.  1 also demonstrates interactions within the niche players by demonstrating how positive impact niche players may use competitive or cooperative framing amongst themselves to legitimise each other and engage in framing contests with negative impact niche players to infiltrate the regime and gain dominance by delegitimising their model of business. This, too, was highlighted by the MLP literature, which emphasised how niche players may compete to gain dominance and have their novelties used in the regime or even replace regime practices and norms (Schot & Geels, 2008 ). For instance, like our emphasis on coopetitive dynamics between different positive impact niche players, Köhler et al. ( 2019 ) also highlighted the need to understand the complementary and competing interactions between emerging and existing niches. Here, however, we expanded the conversation within the MLP literature on transitions at the niche level. Exclusively, we propose a distinction between negative and positive impact niches and challenge the assumption that niches are almost always associated with positive environmental and societal impact.

Unlike the expectation of a ‘sustainable transition’, we show that fashion first evolved from a prêt-à-porter to fast fashion. Today, the fast-fashion regime is threatened mainly by the negative impact of ultra-fast fashion niches, unlike the expectation of sustainable fashion players taking over the regime. Indeed, with all the stakeholder concerns, ultra-fast players like Boohoo have been financially very successful and still growing via takeovers and acquisitions of many known fast fashion brands.

Conclusions

In this paper, we shed light on (un)sustainable transitions by presenting an illustrative case of transitions in fashion. Based on the illustrative case of fashion, we presented a framework that integrates institutional logics and framing with the interactions in the MLP. We also explored the fashion industry's positive and negative sustainability developments. By doing so, we contributed to the literature in three distinct ways.

First, we demonstrated how fast fashion became the regime and how ultra-fast fashion will likely replace today’s fast fashion. Antal et al. ( 2020 ) previously invited others to study unsustainable trends, which have received scant attention thus far. Our analysis particularly focused on these unsustainable trends as we highlighted the negative impact niches at the micro level, antagonistic coalitions at the meso level, and the framing contests that include unsustainable promotion of ultra-fastness and fastness and micro and meso levels. Therefore, we answered the call of Antal et al. ( 2020 ) and contributed to the literature on MLP by expanding the conversation from sustainability transitions to unsustainable transitions.

More specifically, concerning our first contribution, we challenged the notion that niche developments often lead to sustainable solutions. We joined scholars such as Næss and Vogel ( 2012 ), who referred to 'unsustainable niches' and defined two categories of niche players based on their sustainability impact: positive impact and negative impact niche players. While many other scholars gave examples of positive impact niche players in fashion and other contexts, we demonstrated ultra-fast fashion as a negative impact niche. Doing so, we also contributed to the literature on MLP by extending the notion of niche.

Secondly, we shed light on the transitions of the previously neglected fashion context. To our knowledge, transition studies have failed to study the evolution of the textile, apparel, clothing and fashion industries thus far. Therefore, we believe our analysis, based on secondary data and illustrative cases, can provide an initial understanding of transitions to fast fashion (and currently to ultra-fast fashion).

Thirdly, to explain interactions in the MLP framework, we draw on framing contests and institutional logics literature. We, therefore, joined other studies that created a bridge between transitions and framing and institutional logics (Fuenfschilling & Truffer, 2014 ; Runhaar et al., 2020 ) and elaborated on the idea of agency and power, which extant MLP literature in transitions was critiqued for lacking (El Bilali, 2019a , 2019b ; Svensson & Nikoleris, 2018 ).

Limitations and future research guidance

Our study is not without limitations. Firstly, due to our limited research focus, we did not provide how consumer demands may shape the (un)sustainable fashion transitions. Based on Fischer and Newig ( 2016 ), changing consumer trends towards more sustainable alternatives is likely one of the explanatory factors for landscape change today. Here, we believe future research should further focus on the role of consumer trends in shaping the landscape, thus, the macro level of fashion transitions and explain to what degree the changes in consumer trends affected the institutional logics that provide legitimate norms, practices and behaviour.

Secondly, our research is based on secondary data and illustrative examples. While these examples helped us identify some adverse developments and unsustainable transitions, we believe future empirical research is necessary to shed light on the negative impact niche players further, mainly to show how they use competitive framing amongst themselves and engage in framing contests with regime players. Exploring the framing strategies of ultra-fast fashion players like Boohoo and Shein can be a good start for future research. Furthermore, a similar analysis of antagonistic coalitions is also necessary. Here, empirical studies could especially explore how in the face of controversies such as the one about polyester and silk in the Higg Index, different regime players may act together in defence of their positions.

To conclude, for a sustainability transition to occur, positive developments at all levels need to occur in the fashion industry. The multi-layered interaction process presented in this article shows how complex and multi-faceted the transition is in fashion. Joining (Buchel et al., 2018 , p. 39), we also highlight that “to effectively contribute to a transition, one needs to acknowledge the systemic complexity, the myriad of interrelated players and scale levels, and the fact that too often the solutions we are working on now are part of the problem”. Moving forward, we invite future scholars to explore the transitions in the fashion industry, which, in our view, would provide novel explanations regarding unsustainable transitions.

Implications for practice

Our research framework informs three types of practitioners: sustainable fashion entrepreneurs, sustainability managers in fast fashion incumbents, and policymakers. Here, we summarise the implications of our research for these practitioners.

Firstly, our framework shows that sustainable fashion entrepreneurs (that form the positive impact niche) will need to compete with each others’ framings because different entrepreneurs focus on different challenges within the unsustainability of fast fashion and propose different solutions. We demonstrated that these entrepreneurs often go beyond eco-efficiency framing and propose six distinct framings: consistency, degrowth-sufficiency, ethical, slow, circular and sharing. Ultra-fast fashion and fashion players also increasingly adopt eco-efficiency, circular, and sharing framing. Therefore, sustainable fashion entrepreneurs will need to actively challenge fast and ultra fast fashion to establish their legitimacy and destabilise the unsustainable transitions. The idea of framing contests provides sustainable fashion entrepreneurs with an idea of how they can use language tactics, emotions, and ethical values, to replace dominant regime practices and negative impact niches.

Moreover, the tensions between sustainability's environmental, social and economic demands challenge sustainable fashion entrepreneurs. We join Heinze ( 2020 ) and note that financial precarity may affect these entrepreneurs if they cannot balance the demands of the market and sustainability logics. Here, sustainable fashion entrepreneurs must be cautious of drifting away from their missions if market logic gains dominance in their operations.

Secondly, our framework provides insights for sustainability managers in fast fashion incumbents (as part of the regime). We demonstrated that fast fashion incumbents had experienced a legitimacy crisis since the Rana Plaza tragedy. Here, a way forward for the incumbents has been cross-sector partnerships and inter-firm alliances to address various sustainable development goals (Dzhengiz 2020 ) often collaboratively with others in the industry through protagonist coalitio (Dzhengiz et al. 2023 ). We underline that sustainability managers in fashion incumbents play a crucial role as internal change agents and external advocates of their company’s, framing their own sustainable solutions, which are often associated with eco-efficiency. As internal change agents, we believe these managers should motivate their organizations to integrate sustainability into the core of the business. This will, fundamentally, require challenging the fast fashion business model and its emphasis on over-consumption. Here, framing and framing contests, not for external legitimacy but for internal organizational change, can help these managers (Girschik, 2018 ).

Finally, our study posited how transitions could turn unsustainable and not all niches require protection for innovation's sake, especially when their impact on the natural environment and societal well-being is negative. Thus, joining Lazarevic and Valve ( 2020 ), we believe policymakers should address normative questions. Who decides what niches should be protected and on what grounds? Should they be protected at the expense of others? Policymakers should think about these questions. Our framework can help policymakers to conceptualise different multilevel interactions in the context of fast fashion and guide them on the complexities of transitions.

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable.

In this article, when we refer to the fashion industry, we generally mean an overarching sectoral area that includes the whole value chain from fibre production to yarn and fabric production and, finally, clothing production and retail. While we understand that Haute Couture is still a vital element in the fashion system, we focus on fast fashion since we consider it the dominant regime.

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Acknowledgements

We want to thank Minna Halme and Jouni Juntunen for their friendly feedback. We also would like to thank Professor Mike Hodson for his generous and constructive feedback. We also owe a thank you to the participants of SUB sessions at Aalto who also provided constructive feedback to this article while its development. We also would like to thank Elise Rehula for her design support which helped us put our theoretical ideas into a framework.

This research was supported by the Academy of Finland’s Strategic Research Council’s Grant No. 327299 Sustainable textile systems: Co-creating resource-wise business for Finland in global textile networks/FINIX consortium.

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TD contributed to the article especially by building the conceptual framework and looking at the MLP framework through the lens of institutional logics and framing. TH contributed to the article by introducing the literature on sustainable transitions and MLP. OS contributed to the article by bringing insights from textiles and fashion and sustainability issues in this context. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Tulin Dzhengiz isa Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Sustainability at the Department ofStrategy Enterprise Sustainability at Manchester Metropolitan University. Sheis interested in researching inter-organisational relationships, includingcollaborations, strategic alliances, partnerships, innovation andentrepreneurial ecosystems, and industrial clusters in the context ofsustainability and circular economy. She has published in variousjournals such as the International Journal of Management Reviews, BusinessStrategy and the Environment, Journal of Business Ethics, and Sustainability.

Teresa Haukkala is a Research Fellow at the Chair ‘Technology for Change’ at École Polytechnique in Paris, France. Her research focuses on the interface of sustainability, science, technology, business and policy analysis and advocacy. She is a Political Scientist by training and has received her doctoral degree from Organization and Management Studies at the Aalto University School of Business in June 2019. Her PhD thesis handled the wicked problem of a low carbon energy transition and in particular the deployment of solar energy in Finland. After her PhD she worked as a Postdoctoral researcher at Tampere University and Aalto University School of Business before joining École Polytechnique. Prior to her PhD, she has worked in the field of communications as a consultant and manager, and also as a journalist. She has published in leading journals, such as Research Policy, Energy Research & Social Science, Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, and Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy.

Olli Sahimaa is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Aalto University School of Business. His research and teaching focus on systems analysis, sustainability transitions and circular business models. He has extensively studied especially fashion and textiles as well as municipal waste sectors. Sahimaa strives toward inter-disciplinarity in his research. He has published in various highly regarded journals, including Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, Sustainable Production and Consumption and Waste Management. His career background is a combination of environmental engineering and sustainability in business.

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Correspondence to Tulin Dzhengiz .

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Dzhengiz, T., Haukkala, T. & Sahimaa, O. (Un)Sustainable transitions towards fast and ultra-fast fashion. Fash Text 10 , 19 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40691-023-00337-9

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• Multi-level perspective
• Sustainability transitions
• Unsustainability
• Institutional logics
• Framing contests
• Fashion industry

Redesigning the future of fashion

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Each year millions of tonnes of clothes are produced, worn, and thrown away. Every second, the equivalent of a rubbish truck load of clothes is burnt or buried in landfill.

To solve the problem, we must redesign the way our clothes are made and used. Building an industry that designs products to be: used more, made to be made again and made from  safe and recycled or renewable inputs. This is our vision of a circular economy for fashion.

Together, brands, mills and manufacturers from high street to luxury retailers have proven that circular design for fashion can become the norm through the Foundation’s flagship demonstration project The Jeans Redesign (2019-2023).

Now, we must not only redesign the products of the future, but also transform the systems that deliver them and keep them in use. Circular business models designed to keep products in use – such as rental, resale, repair and remaking – allow companies to make revenue without making new clothes and represent an opportunity for new and better growth in the fashion industry.

The fashion industry is rooted in reinvention and has the opportunity to reinvent the processes, supply chains and services to decouple revenue from resource use.

Collaboration is key. Working with partners across the supply chain, securing buy-in from leaders and sharing knowledge creates the conditions for broader, industry-wide change. It’s time to step up the pace and scale of progress.

Explore our vision for a circular fashion industry

We've created a vision for the fashion industry to redesign the way clothes are made and used.

Our vision will require industry and government to work together with significant investment, large-scale innovation, transparency, and traceability. Together we can build an industry that designs products to be used more, made to be made again and made from safe and recycled or renewable inputs.

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Cartier Is Rewarding Those Who Help Others

The brand’s entrepreneurship program aims to expand opportunities for business owners creating “solutions for change.”

By Nazanin Lankarani

Reporting from Paris

Since 2006, Cartier has championed female entrepreneurs whose business ventures have a positive effect on society and the environment.

Cartier, the Richemont-owned jewelry house, is doing this through a program called the Cartier Women’s Initiative . The initiative awards women-owned or female-led businesses from any sector with grant money, networking opportunities, loans and professional advice designed to help them overcome barriers including underfunding and lack of access.

Until last year, the program was exclusively female-focused. But in 2023, Cartier invited men into the fold: The company introduced a new diversity, equity and inclusion pilot award to the program to reward entrepreneurs — regardless of gender — whose businesses fostered opportunities for underrepresented groups.

When the pilot award was announced last year, 70 business owners applied, 80 percent of whom identified as female and 20 percent of whom identified as male, according to Cartier. (Cartier does not disclose its overall number of applicants to the entire program.) This year, the number of applicants to the D.E.I. award category rose to 83, with 20 percent of them being men.

“We feel that the D.E.I. category should be open to all, regardless of gender, social background, religion, origin, size or sexual orientation because everyone can face challenges to access,” Cyrille Vigneron, the president and chief executive of Cartier since 2016, said by phone from Geneva. “Our objective is to create a sense of belonging in a more inclusive world.”

In Paris, Wingee Sin, the global program director of the Cartier Women’s Initiative, said recently that in the D.E.I. category they looked for “businesses who seek to solve an inclusion challenge.”

“Usually these entrepreneurs choose an issue because of an experience in their own lives that inspired them to create solutions for change,” Ms. Sin said. “If they are left out of the entrepreneurship ecosystem, we don’t see those solutions being born.”

The new category reflects how the Cartier Women’s Initiative has evolved and how it may be defying the growing trend among business leaders of backing away from D.E.I. programs.

Mr. Vigneron has been a driving force behind the initiative. When the program began in 2006, it was a business-plan competition that was part of the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society . But in 2017, Mr. Vigneron turned it into a free-standing program that has since awarded more than $9.5 million in grants to some 300 entrepreneurs from 60 countries.

“I am a feminist,” Mr. Vigneron said in a speech at the initiative’s award ceremony last year in Paris, before an audience that included the human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, who also spoke at the event.

“We have the power to liberate women from stereotypes,” Mr. Vigneron said last month in an interview. “But we must also liberate men from their own stereotypes and encourage everyone to be who they want to be, with respect.”

“The initiative today is an independent entity because of a greater commitment on the part of Cartier and because we have experienced strong traction in all the regions we cover,” he said.

To determine the program’s award winners, a jury of businesspeople selects three fellows in first, second and third place in 11 different categories, one of which is D.E.I. These finalists are awarded $100,000, $60,000 or $30,000 in grants and other benefits.

Last year, two of the three top prizes in the category were awarded to men.

First prize in the category went to Blake Van Putten, the chief executive of CISE, a Los Angeles-based fashion house that sells products designed to empower the Black community. Its best seller is a vegan-leather handbag embossed with the words “Protect Black Women” that retails for $150.

“After the murder of George Floyd, I felt I wasn’t doing enough for the Black community,” Mr. Van Putten said recently by phone from Los Angeles.

Third prize was awarded to Chengchuan Shi, the founder and chief executive of Voibook Technology in Guangzhou, China. Mr. Shi, who lost his hearing at age 11 after an illness, founded the company in 2016 to help the hearing-impaired who did not know sign language to communicate using an artificial intelligence-based platform to write text or turn their typed words into sounds.

Second prize went to Ishani Roy, the female founder and chief executive of Serein Inc. from Bengaluru, India, whose company specializes in strategies and policies to address and prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.

This year, no men made it into the top three in the D.E.I. category.

The current D.E.I. finalists are Sadriye Gorece, the founder of BlindLook, a company from the Bay Area that developed an A.I.-powered audio app to help the visually impaired shop online; Erica Cole, the founder of No Limbits in Richmond, Va., which makes clothing tailored for people with disabilities; and Akshita Sachdeva, whose company, Trestle Labs, in Bangalore, India, designed Kibo (“Knowledge in a Box”), a device that gives blind people audio access to printed, handwritten and digital content.

The prizes will be announced at an award ceremony on May 22 in Shenzhen, China.

“Shenzhen is a hub of innovation and creativity,” Mr. Vigneron said. “We also thought it would be important and interesting to go to China, where there is a very strong community of female entrepreneurs.”

Rakuten, EBay Team up to Test US Market for Used Japanese Fashion Goods

A view of a Rakuten Mobile branch in Tokyo, Japan, November 28, 2023. REUTERS/Anton Bridge/Files

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Rakuten Group is partnering with eBay to test U.S. demand for used Japanese fashion goods, made all the cheaper with the yen trading near a 34-year low.

The tie-up, which started on May 8 with just seven vendors on Rakuten's second-hand goods unit Rakuma, aims to capitalise on the currency effect and also a move toward bargain hunting as cost-of-living pressures around the world crimp spending.

In exchange for commissions on sales, eBay lists Rakuma's selected goods for sale on its site, while a Rakuten-contracted vendor handles shipping and customer service in the U.S.

The trial is starting with used fashion and accessories, which have cachet overseas due to Japanese users' reputation for treating their luxury goods gently, said Rakuma general manager Kenichiro Hasegawa.

"Because of the use of cases and covers and such, these second-hand goods are in quite good shape," Hasegawa said. "To say something is 'used in Japan' gives some immediate value."

The tie-up comes amid an investment and tourism boom in Japan, partly fuelled by the yen's slide that has made the country's goods relatively cheap. Second-hand stores, notably in Tokyo's electronics district of Akihabara, have been swarmed by overseas customers looking to snap up vintage games and toys.

Rakuten did not provide a sales target for the venture with eBay. Hasegawa said there has not been any feedback from the seven vendors yet, but if the trial goes well the goal would be to link up all Rakuma shops and users with eBay.

Used and refurbished items make up about 40% of eBay's gross merchandise volume. Global sales of "thrifted" clothing, shoes, and accessories increased more than five-fold in March 2024 from the year before, the company said.

After the U.S., eBay's next biggest markets are Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Germany, and its "ultimate goal" would be to expand Rakuma offerings to those countries, said Naoki Kitamura, eBay Japan's head of category management.

(This story has been corrected to clarify that the U.S. shipping, customer service is handled by Rakuten contractor, not eBay, in paragraph 3)

(Reporting by Rocky Swift; Editing by Sonali Paul)

Copyright 2024 Thomson Reuters .

Tags: recycling , United States , Japan , fashion

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• Do LED Skin-Care Devices Even Work?

If you’ve spent even five minutes on the beauty side of TikTok, you’ve undoubtedly come across an influencer wearing a Darth Vader–style mask with light emanating from its perimeters or waving a glowing wand over their face. Light therapy via at-home LED (light-emitting diodes) devices is trending in skin care right now, but it’s not just a fad. According to Dr. Jared Jagdeo , who is the director of the Center for Photomedicine at SUNY Downstate Medical Center and a leading researcher on the subject, LED-light therapy has been around for about two decades.

LED-light therapy harnesses different wavelengths of light to trigger chemical reactions that increase energy production inside cells, reduce cellular damage, promote healthier cell functioning, and stimulate collagen production. It also improves blood circulation and encourages the formation of new blood vessels, all of which translates to major skin benefits.

You can try LED-light therapy in many different colors, each one suited to a different purpose. Red light and blue light are, by far, the most popular choices — and for good reason: “Red light and blue light have been extensively studied and have clinical studies showing effects for various skin concerns,” says Dr. Danilo C. Del Campo, a dermatologist at the Chicago Skin Clinic. “The studies date back decades and have been expanding in their uses ever since.”

We talked to experts and scoured the research to answer your questions about both forms of light therapy so that you can pick a high-quality device and use the color setting that works best for you. That said, it’s still important to consult your dermatologist before incorporating LED-light therapy into your skin-care routine. “As a dermatologist, I don’t have any qualms per se about the consumer using some of these devices that are FDA-approved, but it should be part of a treatment plan,” says Dr. Monica K. Li , who has performed several studies on light therapy for acne.

What is blue-light therapy?

Blue-light therapy, which uses wavelengths between 380 to 500 nanometers, targets bacteria and infections on the skin’s surface. The FDA approved blue-light therapy for the treatment of acne in 2002, and that continues to be the primary reason it’s used.

Li says blue light can effectively reduce acne-forming bacteria, which will prevent and reduce the severity of breakouts. (You may need to combine blue-light therapy with other treatments to effectively clear more severe forms of acne, such as nodules and cysts.)

In addition to treating acne, Del Campo says blue light can improve skin clarity, regulate oil production, and potentially help with conditions like sun damage and rosacea. It can also be useful for treating eczema and itching, as well as stimulating hair growth, according to a study out of the Medical University of Łódź in Poland. And other research suggests that LED blue-light therapy improves symptoms of psoriasis.

However, several of the dermatologists we’ve spoken with say that the evidence supporting blue-light therapy for use outside of acne treatment is not as robust as it should be, so take it with a grain of salt. “The original FDA approval for blue-light therapy was done in the early 2000s, and it only got approval for treating acne,” explains Del Campo. Blue lights are also more expensive than the red ones. For both of those reasons, you’re unlikely to find blue-light-only devices. Instead, you’ll see devices that combine blue and red light or devices that allow you to toggle between different colors.

What is red-light therapy?

Compared to blue light, red-light therapy uses longer wavelengths of light, between 630 and 940 nanometers, which allows it to penetrate deeper than the top layer of skin. As explained by the Cleveland Clinic , red light can boost cellular energy, reduce inflammatory proteins, stimulate collagen production, and increase blood circulation. These effects make red light quite popular for treating signs of aging . They also make it useful in wound-healing and managing inflammatory skin conditions like rosacea, inflammatory acne, psoriasis, and eczema.

Del Campo says that red-light therapy can be a good option for people who want an anti-aging treatment that won’t interfere with their pregnancy journey. “I get a lot of patients who are trying to become pregnant, and they don’t want to be on any prescriptions that can be a risk to a baby, so that takes away a lot of anti-aging retinoids and a lot of other topicals that we would often use,” he explains.

Is there any benefit to using blue and red light together?

Yes! Because red- and blue-light therapy solve somewhat different issues, they complement each other when combined. “Using both therapies together can result in clearer, healthier, and more youthful-looking skin,” says Del Campo.

Dr. Terrance Baker , who is the president of the North American Association for Photobiomodulation Therapy, also notes that a combination can be useful if your medical condition involves both infection and inflammation. A painful cystic pimple among a larger acne breakout is a prime example; blue light’s antibacterial properties will target and kill the bacteria on the skin’s surface, while red light can help reduce inflammation and promote healing of the infected area. “There have been several scientific studies demonstrating that the combination of red and blue light is more effective than topical benzoyl-peroxide cream” for treating acne, says Li.

Are there any risks to using blue or red LED-light therapy?

Baker notes that side effects from light-therapy devices are rare but can occur if patients are sensitive to light, use the device improperly, or if the device malfunctions. He advises immediately stopping treatment and consulting a doctor if you experience any pain or swelling.

Certain medical conditions such as melasma, iron-metabolism deficiencies, and autoimmune disorders can increase sensitivity to ultraviolet light, potentially causing rashes or generalized redness after brief sun exposure. Additionally, some medications — including certain blood-pressure medications and antibiotics — along with skin-care products like tretinoin or glycolic acid can heighten sensitivity to ultraviolet light. Therefore, consulting a doctor before using these devices is essential.

Proper use is crucial to avoid complications, so it’s imperative that you follow the manufacturer’s instructions carefully and make sure your device is legit. One of Del Campo’s patients sustained severe burns after using an unbranded device purchased from a drop-shipper.

Jagdeo acknowledges that while light therapy is generally low risk, there are potential adverse effects, including hyperpigmentation and blisters. He also notes that research suggests people of color may be more sensitive to visible light, recommending an every-other-day treatment frequency instead of daily use to mitigate risks.

How do at-home LED-light devices compare to in-office LED-light-therapy treatment?

For safety reasons, at-home LED-light-therapy devices are much less powerful than those that dermatologists use in their offices. Because of that limited potency, at-home devices have to be used for an extended period to deliver results. Patients who receive in-office treatment can expect to see a difference in their skin in a handful of sessions.

What are the best at-home light-therapy devices?

Owing to safety concerns, it’s crucial to do research before making a purchase. Jagdeo recommends buying devices “that have been studied through the scientific peer-review process” to ensure they’ve been evaluated by independent experts for effectiveness, safety, and reliability.

Few brands have gone through the peer-review process, so Del Campo also recommends looking at well-known brands with American-based customer service and FDA clearance.

After you’ve checked those boxes, you should consider which style of device is best. For targeting individual blemishes or localized pain, spot-treatment devices like wands, flashlight-shaped devices, or stickers are ideal. For more comprehensive anti-aging treatments covering larger areas, masks are more appropriate. Additionally, while some devices are straightforward with a simple on-off operation, others offer adjustable light settings, allowing users to tailor their treatments even further. Regardless of what you end up purchasing, manufacturers typically recommend brief treatment sessions — ranging from five to 15 minutes — several times a week.

Here, some recommendations from the dermatologists we interviewed:

Best red-light device for anti-aging treatment

Jagdeo, who has consulted for Omnilux, often recommends its products because they’re the only devices he knows of that have gone through the peer-review process (its use appears in more than 40 peer-reviewed clinical papers and studies).

The Omnilux Contour Face uses red and infrared light to make your skin look younger and healthier, reducing signs of fine lines, wrinkles, pigmentation, and redness. It’s a flexible silicone mask that you strap to your head so that it comfortably sits in place for the full ten-minute treatment session.

Omnilux recommends repeating this treatment three to five times per week for four to six weeks. Paris Hilton told the Strategist she uses it “three times a week. If I’m on business calls where I’m not on-camera, I’ll be lying there with it.” According to a brand representative, users tend to see a reduction of fine lines and wrinkles within that time period. After that, the brand recommends using the device at least three times per week for maintenance.

Best red-light device for under eyes

The Eye Brightener device is shaped like an under-eye mask to specifically target dark circles and fine lines in that region. Not only does it emit red and near-infrared wavelengths to stimulate collagen and elastin production and reduce inflammation and pigmentation, but it comes with patches infused with ingredients like niacinamide (which brightens dark circles) and amino-acid-rich peptides (which firm and hydrate skin). Similar to the Omnilux Contour Face device, the Eye Brightener is intended to be used for ten minutes three to five times per week for four to six weeks.

Best red-and-blue-light device for treating acne

Around the size of a hockey puck, the Omnilux Mini Blemish Eraser is big enough to treat a cluster of acne rather than a single pimple. It combines red, infrared, and blue light so that it eliminates bacteria and reduces inflammation and redness.

Like the Eye Brightener, the Blemish Eraser comes with hydrocolloid patches infused with salicylic acid and green tea to adhere the device to your skin and treat it with a topical solution. Although the initial treatment is the same as the other Omnilux devices (four ten-minute sessions per week for four to six weeks), the brand does not recommend a maintenance period. Instead, stop treating the area after six weeks.

Best interchangeable device for spot treatment

Baker appreciates the AAH Light for its durability and portability. Unlike the Omnilux Contour Face mask, which treats the face in its entirety, this flashlight-shaped device is useful for spot treatment. Baker uses the AAH Light to tamp down hair growth, facial acne, sore muscles, tendinitis, and more. The AAH Light comes with red-, blue-, and green-light heads, so you can select the light types that best suit your needs.

To use it, simply hold or hover the AAH Light over the area you’re treating, keeping it steady for ten to 30 seconds. Then move it about an inch over and hold again. Repeat this until you’ve covered the whole area you’re working on.

Although it isn’t FDA-approved, Baker appreciates its small size, airplane-grade aluminum, and the fact that it’s waterproof. “I’ve got units that I’ve used every day for five years, and they’re still working,” he says.

Best red-and-blue-light device for injury recovery and pain relief

Baker also likes CareWear, which claims to be the first wearable, wireless, FDA-registered LED-light patch. “CareWear puts together a wonderful unit because it’s basically a Band-Aid of light,” says Baker. You simply peel the cover off the reusable adhesive patch, apply it to the area you want to treat, attach the controller, and click the controller’s button to turn it on.

Combining red and blue light, the patches are designed for injury recovery and pain relief rather than for dermatological use. They are rechargeable, reusable, and waterproof.

Other LED devices we’ve written about

Our Experts

Dr. Jared Jagdeo , director of the Center for Photomedicine at SUNY Downstate Medical Center

Dr. Monica K. Li , dermatologist at Vancouver Skin MD

Dr. Terrance Baker , president of the North American Association for Photobiomodulation Therapy

Dr. Danilo C. Del Campo , dermatologist at Chicago Skin Clinic

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