Social & Material Impacts
”Used clothing exports from the U.S. have more than tripled in the last fifteen years, from 537 million pounds to a staggering 1.7 billion pounds of clothes annually. For a visual, the average pair of women’s skinny jeans weighs about one pound. Each year we export the equivalent in weight of enough old jeans to clothe the populations of China and the United States combined. Today, America is the largest exporter of unwanted clothes in a global trade worth almost 4 billion dollars annually.”
–The Conscious Closet by Elizabeth L. Cline
Textile production has a history of exploitative labor, immense greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution and use of hazardous working conditions and chemicals. “Textile production is increasingly outsourced to countries with cheap labor, lack of regulations and human right abuses.”
–The Costume Directory by Sinéad Kidao
Communicate & Commit
- 1. Set quantitative goals with everyone you interface with on your team including but not limited to the Director, Choreographer, Production Manager, designers, costume shop, actors, artisans and vendors
- a. Example: Name a goal of prioritizing 50% used costumes
- 2. Establish a textile recycling plan and a strike plan at the beginning of the process
Stock, Swaps, & Source Locally
Take Stock:
- Is there anything that can be used as is?
- Can any pieces be adapted? If adapting, will the garment remain multi-use for future productions? Will adapting be overly labor-intensive?
- Is it durable? Will the fabric perform based on the demands of the production?
- Is it toxic? How do you clean it?
Consider Swaps:
As designers, we often have a few gems in our personal costume stocks. Consider creating a win-win among your fellow designers by pooling resources and setting expectations for an exchange of this nature.
Source Locally:
- Costume Rental Houses
- Second Hand Resources
- Fashion Brands with a Commitment to Sustainability
Source Responsibly
Commonly Used Fabrics
“Cotton consumes close to 19 million tons of chemicals each year, while synthetic materials gobble up 342 million barrels of oil. The leather industry discharges the same quantity of emissions as 30 million cars driven over the course of one year. We need to improve sustainability of all the materials we wear.” -The Conscious Closet by Elizabeth L. Cline
Supply Chain Transparency
Check the supplier’s website to see if every stage of production is identified. If not, contact the company directly for more information.
Look for Deadstock, Certifications and/or Local Artisans, Cooperatives and Communities with Sustainable Practices
