5 Books On Fashion And Our Planet

What are your go to books to learn more about fashion and how it intersects with sustainability, the climate crisis and our planet? Here are five of our favourites 🧚🏼

1. Loved Clothes Last — by Orsola de Castro is both a practical guide to how to get more wear out of your wardrobe, and a stand against mindless consumption. And it’s not just fast fashion, Orsola reminds us - luxury companies can also be guilty of a lack of transparency, exploitative labor conditions, polluting the environment and promoting endless consumerism.⁣

2. Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture — Ellen Ruppel Shell reports in this book how the world has been transformed by its relentless fixation on low price. She effectively exposes the increasing consumers' obsession with discounts and bargains and showcases the negative effects of cheap products and discount pricing has on our planet. ⁣

3. Clothing Poverty: The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-Hand Clothes — Written by a lecturer of Development & Environment at King’s College London, Brooks shares the hard data behind our consumption of fast fashion. He also deviates from the typical narrative of blaming our unsustainable practices and the perpetuation of poverty in the Global South on new clothes and conducts extensive research on the lifespan of our secondhand clothes as well.⁣

4. The Conscious Closet — This book by Elizabeth Cline is for someone who is inspired to take action and make personal changes to their wardrobe. Cline covers different aspects of sustainable fashion and will give you the tools that you need to begin to make a change. This book is for anyone who is curious about the fashion landscape, especially how it relates to environmental issues.⁣

5. Empire Of Things — One of the core problems in sustainable fashion is our rate of consumption. In the western world, we’ve developed this habit of treating our items like disposable goods and our buy-buy-buy culture is beginning to take a toll on the Earth. This book explores how our capitalistic society came to be and how our culture has shifted along with it.⁣