Yet, what does it mean that this propagandized corporate sustainability might not be the solution we’ve been led to believe it is? What if, instead of dismantling oppressive systems, it inadvertently upholds them? This opinion piece, based on existing, critical analyses by actual scholars, interrogates sustainability as a concept rooted in Western, capitalist and colonial logics, one that prioritizes growth, efficiency and consumption under the guise of “green” and “ethical” and “inclusive” practices. By examining its implications in the fashion industry, I argue that the mainstream sustainability discourse is just fashionably late to justice.
The myth of green fashion
The rise of “eco-friendly” luxury, fast and ultra fast fashion lines is a prime example of how sustainability has been co-opted by corporations. Brands tout recycled materials and carbon-reducing initiatives while maintaining exploitative supply chains and overproduction models. All of this not only legitimizes their harmful practices but also shifts the burden of responsibility onto policy frameworks on-hold (or currently blocked and repealed by lobbyists as above stated) and onto consumers, who are encouraged to “shop sustainably” rather than question the system itself. Sustainable fashion, in this context, becomes this Trojan horse – a seemingly progressive idea that smuggles in the same old exploitative practices. For instance, a 2023 report by the Changing Markets Foundation revealed that 60% of sustainability claims by major fashion brands are unsubstantiated or misleading, highlighting the systemic nature of greenwashing. This corporate capture of sustainability perpetuates a cycle of overproduction and overconsumption, all while framing itself as part of the solution.
The erasure of traditional & Indigenous wisdom
Indigenous communities have long practiced land stewardship, circular economies, and community care: principles that align closely with what many now call “regenerative”. Yet, these practices have been systematically ignored or appropriated by mainstream sustainability movements. This erasure perpetuates colonial hierarchies of knowledge, where Western frameworks are privileged over Indigenous wisdom. For example, the fashion industry’s recent interest in “natural dyes”, “regenerative agriculture” and “regenerative business practices” often fails to pay reparations, credit or compensate Indigenous communities for their centuries-old knowledge. A 2025 article in Siddhanta’s International Journal of Cultural Studies rightfully frames cultural misappropriation in fashion as a violation of human rights and highlights how the appropriation of Indigenous practices without recognition or reciprocity reinforces colonial power dynamics. Sustainable fashion’s exclusion of Indigenous sovereignty isn’t an oversight, it’s the latest stage of extractivism, greenwashed as “progress”.
The privilege of “Sustainable Living”
Sustainability has been curated as a lifestyle aesthetic with moral superiority dressed in green clothing and Instagrammable flaunting thrift store finds. Like a luxury handbag, it’s branded as aspirational: Buy this, wear this and you, too, can perform planetary salvation. But behind this glossy editorial of “conscious consumerism” lies a stark reality: the majority of the world’s population isn’t cast in this show. The sustainable fashion industry exemplifies this paradox. Sustainability, as marketed, isn’t just a choice; it’s a privilege stitched with colonial threads. While fast fashion gets blamed for climate sins, a 2025 Oxfam report reveals the real wardrobe malfunction: The richest 1% burned through their annual carbon “allowance” in 10 days, faster than a influencer’s disposable outfit. Meanwhile, the poorest 50% could stretch that same carbon budget across three years of careful consumption. Yet it’s those thrifting, repairing and rewearing who pay the highest price for climate collapse. So, it is clear that change won’t come from shopping our way to justice. It demands dismantling the systems that let privilege masquerade as progress, before the runway further collapses under the weight of its own illusions.
Collective action over individual responsibility – is it enough?
While fashion brands preach individual accountability, their opacity reveals the truth: according to the 2023 Fashion Transparency Index only 37% of major brands disclose a publicly available list of suppliers in line with the Open Data Standard for the Apparel Sector – meaning over 60% still hide their supply chain behind “trade secret” loopholes. We need to understand that no amount of thrifting will regulate wage theft. No “slow fashion” pledge will unionize workers. Collective action isn’t just “enough”. Yes, for now it might be the only tool sharp enough to cut through corporate spin and movements like Fashion Revolution have shifted the narrative from “Did I buy right?” to “Who made my clothes?”. Their demand for Open Data Standards forces brands to unmask their supply chains, proving that transparency is won through protest, not shopping carts. Yet even this is just the first stitch. Solidarity means: Dismantling the poverty narrative that paints garment workers as “lucky” to have underpaid seamstress-jobs; rejecting business saviorism that centers whiteness (e.g., marketing that erases worker-led unions) and attacking profit over people at the source: tax-dodging CEOs, fossil-fuel-derived fabrics and trade deals written by lobbyists.
Beyond ethical collections: The threat of co-opting radicality
If sustainability is the fashion industry’s latest capsule collection – a limited-edition rebrand of the same exploitative patterns – then we need more than a seasonal trend. We need a radical reweaving of the very fabric of our systems. Pluriversality, a term I’ve only recently been introduced to, but one rooted deeply in Indigenous and decolonial thought, isn’t just an alternative to dominant systems. It’s an entirely different way of imagining how worlds are built and shared. It doesn’t ask how to “sustain” the toxic rhythms of fashion’s calendar; it asks who gets to design the cloth, who cuts the patterns and who is forced to stitch and weave under fluorescent lights for wages far away from what is called “living wages”. The Western fashion-industrial complex has only one vision of “progress,” one definition of “innovation,” one oppressive rhythm of production and consumption. Pluriversal fashion isn’t about carbon-offset tree plantations (destined for pulping) or AI-designed ‘circularity’ scams. It’s garments as kinship networks, labor as sacred reciprocity, and land as ancestor, not a ‘carbon sink’ to be monetized and logged. But beware the co-optation has already started: Luxury conglomerates slapping “artisanal” on mass-produced jackets; fashion CSOs hosting “postcolonial listening sessions” while their colleagues are doubling factory quotas.
Conclusion: Unraveling to reweave
So-called sustainable fashion remains a tailored myth, stitched by and for the greenwashed elite. Transformation demands more than adjusting the hem; we must unravel the fabric of oppression and reweave systems rooted in justice. This requires:
- Centering sovereignty (from Diné wool revitalization to Aari embroidery) not as aesthetics, but as living resistance to extraction.
- Divesting from the Eurocentric “sustainability” that tokenizes marginalized voices while hoarding power.
- Redirecting capital to garment worker unions, Muslim leatherworker collectives and Black farm-to-cloth movements, not CSR reports.
- Abolishing the poverty lie, where exploited laborers are framed as “beneficiaries,” never architects of their liberation.
- Dismantling growth-obsessed supply chains, replacing them with regional fiber economies where clothing is kinship, not commodity.
- Honoring the more-than-human e.g. cotton as relative, not crop; land as ancestor, not asset.
Corporate fashion sustainability’s gatekeepers -myself included- built this Trojan Horse. Now, we must step aside and support:
- Abolish poverty wages where garment workers are experts, not “cheap labor.”
- Divest from fossil fabrics and fund worker-owned cooperatives from Dhaka to Detroit.
- Replace “stakeholder capitalism” with reparations like binding brands to unionized factories, not PR workshops.
This isn’t about rethinking fashion. This is about becoming unfashionable and unsustainable by the orthodox standards.
References
Changing Markets Foundation. (2023). Synthetics Anonymous: Fashion’s Persistent Plastic Problem.
Oxfam UK, Richest 1% Burn Through Their Entire Annual Carbon Limit in Just 10 Days (2024).
Fashion Revolution. (2023). Fashion Transparency Index.
Taboada, M., Turner, J., Seevinck, J., & Foth, M. (2024). A worldbuilding approach for pluriversality in codesign. CoDesign, 20(1), 218-241.
