TCNJ

31 FALL 2024 What advice do you give people who want to change their shopping habits? The most responsible things you can do are keep your clothing longer, buy less, and buy secondhand. What about donating clothing? Is that helpful? Most of what you donate doesn't actually get sold at Goodwill or your thrift store because we are just donating so much stuff every day. And all this stuff is either being burned, or it's ending up festering in these landfills in places like Ghana and Chile. Our habit ends up being their problem — and so what are the ethics behind that? If you have clothing that you are done using, give it to a friend knowing that they could possibly use it instead of having it sit in the back of Goodwill, never to be sold. Are you optimistic about our capacity — and will — to solve these problems? There are a lot of people who really want to clean up the industry. They care about the planet, and they care about people who work in the industry and want to protect them. I feel very positive about that. I'm encouraged that there's policy work being done to hold brands accountable, but I'm worried because I don't think we're solving the problem fast enough. Can you talk a little bit about what sustainable fashion means? Our closets are bursting. When you talk about sustainable production, the question is, can it last? We're running out of finite resources — water, petroleum — to make things like polyester. When you think about a fabric like rayon, it is made from trees. That is causing deforestation. Sustainability, to me, means that brands will manufacture clothing responsibly. They're overproducing clothing that ends up in landfills. There is labor exploitation. They are polluting rivers worldwide in the dyeing process. This is not a sustainable business model, and it is not sustainable for the earth. What's the history of fast fashion? When did our habits begin to shift toward this kind of clothing? Fast fashion was supposed to democratize fashion. Clothing brands were taking runway trends, and they were making those trends accessible to everybody at a really low price point. Suddenly, anyone could wear the latest thing. Now, the customer is completely hooked on these really low prices, and they don't want to give them up. It's like a fast food addiction. I tell my students to look at their labels, and then we'll do some research on what the factory conditions are like in that particular country. Do you get the sense that your students are tuned in to the labels and where clothing is made and the sustainability issues that overlap with fashion? Definitely. I think they just need the tools to figure out how they can shop more responsibly. I feel like I'm always battling the next influencer on TikTok who is trying to sell them something. I don't teach the class to make them feel guilty about buying from these fast-fashion brands, but maybe to think about buying less. My daughter is 24, and she's always joked that I've ruined shopping for her. When she was a teenager, we'd go to Forever 21, and I would say to her, "If this camisole costs $5.99, what do you think the garment worker was paid?" And she'd be like, "Can you not?" I WANT TO WRITE ABOUT THIS. THE SUSTAINABILITY OF THE INDUSTRY. THE BUSINESS OF FASHION. Kathleen Webber Your writing really captures the urgency of this issue. Is it hard not to see more progress being made? I think if I could change my career, right now, I would become a textile scientist. I would try to figure out how to create fabrics that biodegrade, that decompose, with dyes that don't hurt the environment. But I don't know how to get people to stop shopping so much. The psychology of it is really something that is just hard to solve.

• Cover