Ethics Lecture

Ethics
-Seminar notes: Changing Fashion Landscapes 13/12/18-

Ethics

• Exploitative labour
• Environmental damage
• Chemical
• Waste
• Animal cruelty 

Circular Economy 

“A circular economy is an alternative to a traditional linear economy (make, use, dispose) in which we keep resources in use for as long as possible, extract the maximum value from them whilst in use, then recover and regenerate products and materials at the end of each  service life” (Wrap,2018) (Cradle to Cradle)

Sustainability

Closed loop system; 

Examples of ‘closed loop’ company strategies:

• Levi’s
• H&M

Fashion brands slower to adopt ‘closed loop’:

• Primark
• Luxury brands; farming animal furs, difficult to trace some supply chains/accountability for production 

Impacts

• Sustainability
• Climate 
• Depletion of natural resources (animals, habitat, water and so on)

Eco-Fashion

• Fashion sustainability
• People tree
• Pantigonia
• UNMADE: niche knitwear - consumer can produce their own product
• Traid
• Oxfam hub Batley; Online vintage

Counterfeit Goods

• Luxury market
• Countries and counterfeiting
• Creates problems with sales, profit and the kudos of brands in question
• Further promotes unethical practice (hidden manufacture of goods)

Social Responsibility

• What we consume
• Why we consume
• What forms our consumer patterns]who is responsible for increased consumption
• Our understanding of product use and where product goes
• How our actions impact on others, (links back to ethics)

Generational Shifts

• Different consumers, consume in different ways
• Generation X; largely bricks and mortar, high street with some online consumption
• Generation Y; largely online, with some bricks and mortar consumption
• Generation Z; born into the digital age

• Methods of marketing to consumers are continually shifting, due to the complex nature of the cross generational experience of interacting with and identifying product.

Marketing Methodologies 

Bricks and mortar type institutions; for example: John Lewis

• Television
• Loyalty cards/data collection
• Long routes to identifying and engaging their customer

Online;

• Uses cross sectional marketing/advertising
• Social media
• Some terrestrial TV advertising (E.g. Boohoo)
• Posters/digital bill boards/ taxis (e.g. Boohoo)
• Fast fashion social media cascade

High street retailers engaging the consumer;

• Both digitally and physically 
• Topshop: Online offers, as well as high street ‘lock ins’ for students for example

Generation X

• Brought up through the era of ‘physical’ shopping experience 
• Department stores
• High street brands
• Have a tendency to brand loyalty and still attach value to the cost of an item
• Tend to reflect personal status through conspicuous consumption

Generation Y

• Cross over generation;
• Technology occurred through their life
  time
• Much more connected to digital forums; Instagram, Twitter and so on.
• Primarily focused on online resource, but some consumer habits attach to bricks and mortar
• Not as brand loyal

Generation Z 

• Born through the age of digital technology;
• immersed in digital as a way of life, (naturally navigate and attach technology through everyday life experience)

Consumer Shifts

Shift to online shopping; 

• Comparing and contrasting product online
• Sourcing the bets price from online to comparison 
• Social media provides a platform to display product choice
• Online shopping has seen the shifts of consuming fast fashion 

Impact of online vs high street

High street;

• Same products different stores
• Increasingly less differentiation in product
• Product prices higher 

Online; 

• More convenience
• Potentially find cheaper option

Where does this lead us??

Globalisation;

• Materials 
• Labour
• Sourced at low labour
• Industrialised methods of growing crops
• Habitat and environmental destruction 

Futures;

• Further digitisation
• Niche product 
• Embedding of technologies
• Digitisation in fashion fashion/print/textiles
• 3D printed products 
• Biometrics
• Textile grown from organism