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The fashion industry has become one of the most polluting industries in the world, driven by the rise of the Fast Fashion production model. In Israel, as in most developed countries, the production model of Fast Fashion conquered the Israeli market and had a profound effect on it. In response to the rise of Fast Fashion in Israel, an increasingly significant counter-movement is emerging. The sustainable fashion movement in Israel draws its inspiration from a global movement, but its roots can also be found in Judaism. Traditions, such as the year of Shmita ("sabbatical year") which forbids excessive agriculture; and the Shatnez ban—which forbids the production of clothing made of wool and linen blends, facilitates the recycling of clothes more easily and at relatively low costs; as well as adherence to labor laws that prohibit slavery. This article explores sustainable fashion in Israel and its relationship with Judaism, reviewing Israeli businesses, such as secondhand clothing stores, local designers that produce sustainably, and upcycling designers. This descriptive study aims to offer insights gained through the examination of ancient and modern values on conscious fashion consumption and it's potential to encourage sustainability in the fashion world in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture covers a wide range of topics in the fashion world. From exploring the influence of Chinese government policies on fashion media to discussing the role of jewelry as art, the journal delves into diverse perspectives. Articles also touch on sustainable fashion in Israel, Nigerian ceramics, and the connection between fashion and refugee literature. The journal provides insights into the complex relationship between fashion, culture, and society. [Extracted from the article]

Confronted with the fashion industry's serious socio-environmental impact and acknowledging that fast fashion provokes unstable relationships with clothing, accelerating loss of value and early disposal, this article explores those cases in which garments are still valued and attachment is strong. We are interested in identifying the motives behind the bonds that are developed toward cherished pieces of clothing. For this, we have analyzed more than 600 short stories, written by men and women from all over Chile, that justify those garments that remain in their closets for many seasons and reasons. The results allow us to identify a set of attributes and their correlations, enriching the discussion about the relationship between people and dress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uniqlo, Japan's largest fashion brand, operates over 2200 stores internationally; however, it is largely pan-Asian as 92% of the stores are in Asia. Taiwan is no exception where the notion of fashion, rather than clothing, originally arrived under Japanese rule in the early twentieth century. After being independent of Japan in the mid-twentieth century, many Taiwanese still preferred Japanese rather than Western designs and trends due to the cultural similarities between Taiwan and Japan. This became further evident when Uniqlo opened its first Taiwanese store in 2010. However, Uniqlo's business model of providing simple design products of high quality can be explained by neither Laver's Law of fashion cycle nor the strategy of European fast fashion brands that offer fast cycle fashion items without guaranteeing quality. To discover motives and reasons behind the Taiwanese mindset, we have conducted 15 interviews, including two with former Uniqlo workers, at various locations in Taiwan. We then conclude that Taiwanese consumers seek quality clothes from Uniqlo, tangible features of clothing rather than symbolic elements of fashion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this moment of ecological crisis, the consequences of crisis are unevenly distributed, with those with the least power impacted the most. The fashion industry's growth, spurred in the past decades by fast fashion and a reliance on growth of petroleum-based fibers, is a contributor to this uneven distribution of ecological consequences. This paper explores fashion and ecology as interconnected transnational systems. It does this with reference to two contexts: the UK and the Gulf state of Bahrain. By exploring positions on environmentalism in the UK and Bahrain, questions around fibers, clothing care and waste, this paper underscores the political urgency and the relational effects of change that span nation states within the fashion sector. Decarbonizing the fashion system requires both localized action and methodologies in addition to political will to work between and across such themes. Transnational perspectives are central to cumulative whole-systems effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent revelations about illegally low wages and abject working conditions in Leicester's "dark" garment factories—endured by its vulnerable mainly global majority and migrant workforce—have once again highlighted British fashion's benighted "other" and its reliance on cheapened and "expendable" "racialized" sweated labor. Forced to work on through the Covid pandemic to produce fast fashion for e-commerce brands, "British" fashion manufacture now reflects the wider plight of the global CMT (Cut, Make and Trim) army, who at considerable personal risk and cost, manufacture most of our fashion. Drawing on a set of theoretical innovations in Marxist and post-Marxist theory, notably Smith and Suwandi theory of labor "super-exploitation," De Genova's work on the disciplining of migrants through "border regimes and spectacles" and Gargi Bhattacharyya's critical reading of Cedric Robinson's thesis of "Racial Capitalism" (1983), this article explains how and why its specter still castes such a deep and troubling shadow over the production of fashion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Korean pop music (K-pop) scene in recent years has become a fashion powerhouse where its highly visible stars exert tremendous influence on their fans' fashion practices. As K-pop content is most frequently consumed on YouTube, K-pop music videos have come to be cybernetic runway shows, whetting the fans' appetite for endless fashion consumption. This paper examines K-pop's double entendre as both a seminal player in and a critic of the fashion industry by comparing two highly influential music videos—G-Dragon's "Crooked" (2013) and BTS's "Spring Day" (2017)—that allegorically comment on the contemporary fashion practices of quick accumulation and disposal. Arguably the most successful artists in the genre's history, both G-Dragon and the seven-member BTS exert huge influence on youth culture not just in Asia but far beyond. The article will touch upon broader calamities generated by environmental crisis and highlight the struggles of millennials around the globe who are subject to the neoliberal ethos of ruthless self-promotion, often in the form of self-fashioning practices. The article posits fashion as a significant sartorial and social practice of calibrating an individual's role in a broader context of ecocriticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fashion in the twenty-first century is typically fast fashion, characterized by mass production, high turnover and goods designed for a short lifespan. The kimono appears to be the antithesis of fast fashion in terms of production and consumption. A kimono takes time to create and usually has a long lifespan. However, in the current global fashion market there has been a growing trend towards slow fashion, which involves longer production times, use of local materials, and a focus on quality and sustainability. Elements within the Japanese fashion industry exhibit this trend but the reality is more complex than simply complying with a set of slow fashion criteria. An examination of the Kyoto kimono-making industry demonstrates a simultaneous speeding up and slowing down of various aspects of Japanese clothing. Rigorous scrutiny reveals the difficulty of categorizing production techniques as either fast or slow fashion. In addition, alternative ways of consuming kimono, that align with slow fashion characteristics, demonstrate that they can change the way consumers view purchases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phrase "fast fashion" refers to low-cost clothing collections that mimic current luxury fashion trends. Fast fashion helps sate deeply held desires among young consumers in the industrialized world for luxury fashion, even as it embodies unsustainability. Trends run their course with lightning speed, with today's latest styles swiftly trumping yesterday's, which have already been consigned to the trash bin. This article addresses the inherent dissonance among fast fashion consumers, who often share a concern for environmental issues even as they indulge in consumer patterns antithetical to ecological best practices. Seemingly adept at compartmentalism, and free of conflicted guilt, such consumers see no contradiction in their Janus-faced desires. Can luxury fashion, with ostensibly an emphasis on authenticity, and its concomitant respect for artisans and the environment, foster values of both quality and sustainability? Since individual identity continually evolves, and requires a materially referential re-imagining of self to do so, we hypothesize that actual rather than faux luxury brands can, ironically, unite the ideals of fashion with those of environmental sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phrase "street style" is present in multiple sites, ranging from magazines, exhibitions, blogs, academic texts, and in popular parlance; its association with quirky individuality is one that arises out of its own mythologized and popularized histories. This article aims to interrogate what the current myth of street style is and the relationship this has to the everyday practices of assemblage. It is based upon an ongoing mass fashion observation (MFO) of young people in Nottingham which, through photographs and interviews, aims to document what the various style groupings are, and how these change over time. By taking the approach of documenting street style as an everyday practice, this article makes a case for considering "street style" not solely in terms of the histories of street style, but also considering fashion magazines, clothing sold on the high street, localized style groupings, and how individuals assemble their own outfits. The article points to a shift in street style towards subtly differentiated style groupings which incorporate mainstream, high street fashions. In looking at how styles change over time, it also challenges the use of "fast fashion" in relation to the purchasing and wearing of clothing, as this conceals the complexities of practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At first thought, technology and sustainable fashion might appear to hold contrasting ideals; however, an investigation into technology and sustainable fashion yields complex symbiotic relationships between the two areas. Technology is essentially the prime enabler that allows sustainable fashion to thrive and develop today. The role of technology within the sustainable fashion realm is broken into two main areas: the physical manifestation of sustainable fashion garments, including textiles, and the digital domain. The effects of technology in sustainable fashion are best understood through looking at the work of a technology theoretician, Andrew Feenberg, who advocates for small, but effective, "democratic rationalizations" of technology to achieve positive change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]