ABOUT THE Project
Under the Sufficiency Approaches to Fashion and the Environment (SAFE) project, Hot or Cool are continuing to advocate and support systemic change in the fashion sector. Building on the strong evidence for the need to address overconsumption and overproduction in our first report, the SAFE project will focus on exploring a transformation pathway to sufficiency.
Through this project and in collaboration with a network of experts, policymakers and key stakeholders, we aim to develop a policy framework which directly targets overproduction and overconsumption. The framework will help identify transformative policies and actions for the fashion sector which can effectively change the structure of the fashion system to deliver wellbeing within ecological limits.
Report
Unfit, Unfair, Unfashionable
Current trends in fashion consumption, in particular fast fashion, cannot be maintained if we aim to achieve a fair and just transition to climate neutrality.
Read more
Background
In 2022 Hot or Cool published our landmark report ‘Unfit, Unfair, Unfashionable’ which evidenced the need for systems change in the fashion industry to meet the 1.5-degree emissions target of the Paris Agreement.
The report highlighted that today’s global fashion system is oversized. The rapid increase in textile production and consumption over the past two decades is the primary driver of environmental impacts across the sector. At the same time there are significant inequalities in fashion consumption both between countries and different income groups, with overconsumption dominating in the global North and among high income consumers.
The report defined a Fair Consumption Space for Fashion, an equitable opportunity space in which clothing needs can be met without overshooting the 1.5-degree target of the Paris Agreement. To achieve meaningful decarbonisation we must pursue sufficiency approaches that can address over-production and over consumption from its root-causes, to `resize´ the global fashion system in line with the Fair Consumption Space.
Fossil fuel fashion: The elephant in the room
Are our clothing purchases lining the pockets of fossil fuel companies? Hedda Roberts discusses the reality behind increasing production of synthetic fibres.
A new trade order fit for the 21st Century? Insights from the textile industry
In a world increasingly threatened by planetary collapse and inequality levels at historic extremes, one can ask whether free trade is living up to its promise of delivering peace and prosperity.
