I love the questions that cultural theorist Daniel Bruggeman's video provokes. Is a more human approach to fashion possible? Can we engage with fashion in a more fulfilling manner?
A while back, IKEA’s Chief Sustainability Officer, Steve Howard, spoke at a climate conference to explain how Western society is reaching ‘Peak Stuff.’ The average consumer’s home, bulging with all the materials and goods it needs, has reached tipping point. While our hunger for meaning and purpose remains, we are losing our appetite for buying more and more things.
Can the fashion industry respond to these changing tastes with a richer, more satisfying experience? Can it address our deeper human needs such as the desire to be part of something bigger than ourselves or to find meaning?
Bruggeman suggests that by engaging with the power of fashion to create sustainable livelihoods we could enjoy a more gratifying experience. By seeking out clothes that have been ethically and sustainably produced, we could become active participants in the creation of a fashion industry that we actually believe in, and perhaps this agency, and the unadultered satisfaction that would accompany it, could as Bruggeman puts it, come to be known as the “new luxury”.
What would a more human and engaged approach to fashion look like to you? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.
Jonathan Mitchell,
Brothers We Stand Founder
Daniel Bruggeman's reflections on the future of fashion form part of the State of Fashion Exhibition, 7 weeks of events in Arnhem, Netherlands, searching for the new luxury.
