Sustainable Fashion: Past, Present, and Future

Jennifer Farley Gordon and Colleen Hill
Sustainable Fashion: Past, Present, and Future
London: Bloomsbury, 2015

Sustainable Fashion: Past, Present, and Future provides a unique and accessible overview of fashion ethics and sustainability issues of the past, present and future. This book is the first to situate today’s eco-fashion movement in its multifaceted historical context, investigating the relationship between fashion and the environment as far back as the early nineteenth century.

Employing an expanded definition of sustainability that also considers ethical issues, Jennifer Farley Gordon and Colleen Hill explore each stage of the fashion production cycle, from the cultivation of raw fibers to the shipment of the finished garment. Structured thematically, each of the six chapters is dedicated to the discussion of one major issue, from recycling and repurposing to labor practices and the treatment of animals.

Including interviews with eco-fashion designers, Sustainable Fashion will appeal to students and scholars of fashion, as well as students of design, history and cultural studies.

Book Reviews
“The authors’ passion for sustainable fashion is conveyed in a way that is neither formal nor didactic, but is still quite effective and accessible.”
—Hayley Mildren, Resource

“The book succeeds in bringing together many of the themes and ideas around ethical fashion.”
—Katina Bill, Costume

“Sustainable Fashion makes abundantly clear, chapter after chapter, that there are no easy answers or quick fixes to the dominant fashion system that demands rapid, high-volume manufacturing, intensely sped-up cycles of seasonal new styles, and quick delivery of those styles to thousands of stores worldwide.”
—Jill Morena, Worn Through

“The book capitalizes on making the eco-fashion movement seem attainable to the general public, as well as an issue everyone should acknowledge as a consumer.”
—Lisa Gran, the Global Grid

Exhibition Schedule
Eco-Fashion: Going Green
Fashion and Textile History Gallery
Museum at FIT, New York
May 26–November 13, 2010