Mark’s work tackles the Westernised understanding of sustainable fashion. What it means for us in the UK can be vastly different to others at the beginning of the fashion supply chain.  

His work looks beyond the environmental needs towards the social and economic impact sustainability can have. The challenge now is how to address and communicate the fundamental changes that need to happen. 

Mark is a Lecturer in the School of Design, focusing on sustainability in the textile industry.  

Read more about Mark and his research.

Transcript

[Mark is sitting in front of a white background speaking directly to camera.]

Mark: So, before I started work at the University of Leeds I worked in the industry for a long time and I spent a lot of my time trying to understand where clothes came from, because that was my job. So, I went to places like India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh to look at garment making. But I also started to then look at where fabrics came from and very much started to think about where the raw materials came from.

I started my career off in terms of understanding sustainable fashion by taking a very environmental view. I was very interested in carbon. I was very interested in the impacts in terms of the materials the clothes are made from. And to understand all of those things and the complexity of the supply chain, I spent a lot of time talking to people involved in that supply chain making clothes.

As I got exposed to that more and more, it became really apparent that what we've got in terms of our understanding of sustainable fashion, is a very Western developed centric view about that, which is about carbon, it's about water, it's about chemicals.

But the reality is, because fashion is so global, that's only one part of the story. The other part of the story is understanding the value that fashion has for those people that are involved in making our clothes and what fashion could and should be doing for them as well.

So as a researcher in sustainable fashion, one of the big challenges that we need to be thinking about is what is sustainable fashion and why do we need it? Well, we know that the fashion industry is truly global, highly complex, and has a massive impact in terms of carbon, in terms of water, in terms of the impact it has on workers in the supply chain. And we do need to be thinking about being more sustainable in terms of our fashion choices.

Fashion plays a really important role that goes beyond just this idea of keeping us warm or keeping us dry. It's the most powerful nonverbal communication device that we have as humans. And sustainability, yes, is about things like climate change, but sustainability is also about humans and about human well-being and this idea that our welfare should be improving as time goes on, not just for us as consumers in the developed nations, but also thinking about how people in developing nations can have access to education, access to economic growth, and thinking about welfare in that sense in a truly global way.

And what's intriguing about fashion for sustainability is when fashion is done right, fashion can provide, and does provide, employment for over 400 million people, mostly in developing nations. People that are growing cotton, who are spinning yarns or weaving fabric or actually making the clothes ready for you to wear them.

So, when we talk about sustainable fashion, what we should be thinking about is understanding of what fashion is and what sustainability is bonded together. And, done right, sustainable fashion can deliver all of those things that we as individuals need in terms of our self-identity. But it can also offer an opportunity.for people in developing nations to have access to economic tools. To have access to decent working environments. Access to pay. Access to opportunities that allow them to educate their children.

And that's the real challenge. Sustainable fashion should not be about don't do fashion because that goes against our cultural heritage and it also goes against how those workers can have employment. And what we need to be thinking about is different solutions and making sure that what we don't do and making sure that what we don't do is disadvantage the workers that are supporting that fashion industry.

But importantly, sustainable fashion is not about turning fashion off. It's about doing fashion better. Because that helps consumers, it helps us all in terms of individuals. And it also means that we're protecting the rights of workers. Those 400 million workers in that supply chain who are reliant on fashion for their income.