Consumerism With A Conscience
When I was 12, I thought Suprè was the epitome of style. In my longing to pull off a fluro boob tube, however, I never questioned the way this awful bright elastic had been made, or what would happen to it once my mum banned me from leaving the house in it.
Now, many years wiser, and very aware of my inability to pull off fluro, these questions are part of my everyday shopping experience and, consequently, a huge part of my social media use due to the rising prevalence of sustainable fashion online.
Instagram influences many of my days to day choices, whether it’s creating a craving for ice cream or introducing me to a pair of shoes that I just can’t live without, the persuasive nature of this online environment begs me to constantly consume. The emergence of social media and the rise of digital lifeways, particularly Instagram, has seen consumers find a desire for new forms of sociality.
Instagram has a reputation of permeating “the good life” through posts, with consumerism seeping in at the core of any happy snap. Consumers wish to inhabit the image and lifestyle that they feel the product or service advertised represents. This concept of such a consumer-driven platform makes me question how sustainable fashion can uphold the values and responsibilities of sustainability if it is part of an online environment that encourages consumerism?
Sustainable fashion is an environmentally conscious approach to style, one that relies heavily on cutting consumption. There is no real beginning to the sustainable fashion movement, though many argue that it began to gather momentum in the early 2000s. Sustainable fashion has been classified as a “megatrend,” which means it is larger in magnitude, longer in duration and has a deeper effect than normal trends, fads or fashions. The sustainable fashion movement is smeared across all forms of media, from social media platforms to magazines.
Dacy Knight believes that the recent relationship between the fashion industry and the environmental movement manifests itself symbolically through the industry’s communication methods; i.e., the way it represents and promotes itself to the public using buzz words and symbols in its marketing and branding. Knight states that the fashion industry is founded on trends and is sustained by consumption.
Social networks have changed the way we consume, and due to the digital transformation of our society, and our constant connection to one another, the way we consume fashion is changing rapidly. Chris Anderson found that the spread of the internet has offered customers more choice, creating an environment of consumerism that is not left to the mercy of the mainstream.
Social media sites such as Instagram are saturated with brands all competing for consumers’ attention, with an increasing amount of brand-related interactions and exposure to marketing campaigns taking place on these platforms. The recent integration of the shoppable Instagram post makes consumption even easier. Items displayed in imagery can be bought directly from a single tap on the image. This feature removes endless scrolling and searching and creates a new avenue for impulsive, thoughtless purchases.
This integrated shopping experience isn’t the only way that consumerism has been greatly influenced by modern technology. Harold W. Lucious and John H. Hanson believe that in today’s “digital, social and mobile age, consumers can choose brand messages as much as brand messages choose them”, and the connectivity of consumers means it is easier than ever for consumers to become more acquainted and knowledgeable about a brand, allowing them to make better, more environmentally friendly choices.
While this shift in mindset of users from pure consumerism to consumerism with a conscience is paramount, brands who do not adhere to the sustainable requirements begin to fall behind. This is where the issue of Greenwashing arises. Greenwashing is when companies adjust their marketing to position their products as green in order to get their share of the “green pie”, placing emphasis on environmentally conscientious acts with an underlying greater purpose of increasing profits.
Many brands are jumping on the eco bandwagon, pledging sustainable changes in their product production, but could this trend simply be tokenism permitted by the affordances of online platforms such as Instagram, and aimed at soothing the conscience of the environmentally concerned while still producing and selling the latest trends?
The spread of the internet has seen a shift in consumer behaviour from being passive participants to a form of participatory culture where consumers are shaping, sharing, reframing and remixing media content. The collective identity that online networks have created around the sustainable fashion movement has forced brands to make changes in order to meet the new demands of the consumer.
H&M are a company that raises a red flag for greenwashing. The company’s “conscious” collection claims that sustainability is something they do, rather than simply something they say, and that they prioritise fast fashion, with sustainability as just an “added bonus”. The company are using buzz words and marketing techniques associated with the trend of sustainable fashion to meet eco-conscious consumers wants and needs, pulling the wool over their consumers’ eyes, claiming fashionable victims with their greenwashing ways, and continuously producing garments to encourage their consumers to buy into the latest trends.
On the other side of the sustainable wheel is Hara the Label, an Australian sustainable, ethical and natural bamboo intimates’ brand, who recently took to Instagram to educate their followers on the “unsustainable” ways of H&M. This education through social media around what is sustainable and what is not seems to be a rising trend, with sustainable companies speaking out against their fast fashion counterparts. While these sustainable companies are fighting to bring down fast fashion empires, they are also using Instagram to promote their products and urging people to purchase them, contributing to the consumerist nature of Instagram.
While the sustainable fashion movement encourages both more mindful and reduced consumption, the high concentration of fast fashion companies, as well as the consumer driven, and easily accessible environment of Instagram forces companies who really are sustainable to follow the crowd. Instagram, like “cool” year 7 students, can persuade us to make decisions that aren’t always the best. Whether it’s a boob tube from Supre or a company focused on sustainable production, purchasing for the sake of purchasing is still part of mass consumption culture.
