Happy Nice Mall

In a cozy little corner of the internet, mornings are spent curled up in an armchair, slowly sipping cafe au lait from a ceramic mug. Clothes are plentiful, stick to an earthy color palette and are often paired with chunky handmade clogs. Natural fabrics abound, and plenty of indoor greens always seem to thrive nearby.

Welcome to the world of “slow fashion” influencers, where people – especially women – come together to share clothes and praise the virtues of buying, fixing, and buying well-made clothes rather than fast fashion pieces.

These creators have built a following for their conscious consumption, serene pictures they post on Instagram, and their supernatural ability to look good in clothes. But beneath the surface of all lifestyle photography lies a more complex reality.

Slow fashion is a practice, a set of values, that asks fans to extend the life of their current clothing and buy second-hand if they need to shop. But the term is increasingly being adopted by brands that do little more than produce clothing in smaller quantities than, for example, Gap.

The clothes these companies sell (promoted by influencers) can be produced in small batches by fair-wage workers, but they’re all still new stuff, created using resources extracted from a finite planet. When it comes to slow fashion, the communist refrain that “there is no ethical consumption in capitalism” is no less rhetorical than a real dead end.

“Just the term ‘sustainable fashion influencer’ can sound pretty contradictory,” said Aditi Mayer, a 24-year-old content creator, photojournalist and labor rights activist from Los Angeles.

While these influencers can showcase brands trying to reduce environmental impact, their content still fuels the desire to consume. Spend long enough surfing-related hashtags and you’ll be itching away to drop $400 (a price that might reflect fair labor charges) on an oversized sweater from a brand you’ve never heard of.

The irony of messaging in this social media niche hardly gets lost on influencers. Beth Rogers, 27, described the key to influencing sustainable fashion as “the desire to move away from capitalism and overconsumption while having to participate in it at the same time.” And the best way to deal with that tension, he said over the phone from Chicago, is to “not try to back off or ignore it.”

Ms. Mayer sees herself as a “Trojan horse” in the fashion industry and sometimes uses conversations with brands as a way to learn more about their business practices. “I’m at a really interesting point,” she said, “because the everyday consumer doesn’t necessarily have access to a big company’s internal package.” She stated that brands don’t always take their questions warmly.

“I think there’s a lot of room for the average consumer to learn how to buy things better,” said Marielle TerHart, plus-size creator of Edmonton, Alberta, who uses Marielle Elizabeth online. Ms. TerHart, 32, helps her followers develop more conscious clothing relationships by encouraging people to take care of their clothes and showcasing brands in a wide range of sizes.

Lyndsey DeMarco, 28, a content creator from Portland, Ore., tracks her purchases using budgeting software; In 2021, he bought 15 clothes (a mix of new and used) and another 15 items from the brands. She estimates that she regularly accepts about 5 percent of free clothes offered to her. Ms. Rogers said she usually gets 15 to 20 crops a year.

Many influencers choose their partnerships based on strict criteria. For Ms. TerHart, this means supporting companies that compensate workers well.

“My priority is that everyone who works on the garment is paid a fair and livable wage,” he said, “but I have a little more tolerance for designers who are marginalized in some way because I know their funding opportunities are very different.”

Ms. Mayer focuses on brands with high working standards, but sometimes agrees to partner with larger brands as part of the Faust bargain, where financial freedom will allow her to work less to promote other brands with better morals but smaller budgets.

“I try to present clothing as options, not must-haves,” said Lydia Okello, 32, plus-size content creator from Vancouver, British Columbia. max. Okello is mindful of the language used in these apparel posts as a strategy to balance the inconsistency of accepting paid advertising to promote products while not encouraging consumption.

“I don’t think you should buy it just because you saw it on me or someone you like, though that’s literally my thing,” says Mx. said Okello.

Gabbie Nirenburg, who describes herself as “non-influential” in Philadelphia, said influencers occupy an odd place in the market as an intermediary between consumer and brand. After all, she sees her role as a practical one: Seeing clothing in different sizes can be incredibly helpful when deciding whether to spend $200 on ethically made jeans. (Ms. Nirenburg, 38, who works full-time at a health insurance company, Style Blogger DirectoryIt’s a huge spreadsheet where shoppers can find bloggers with metrics similar to theirs.)

Aja Barber, author of “Consumed: The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change and Consumerism,” said sustainable fashion influencers are educators, not just advertisements. Their primary purpose is to provide outfit inspiration and show how to wear clothes multiple times. They can create a request for new items, but this is not in the context of a disposable trend cycle.

“It’s not like that: ‘Okay, now to next,'” said Ms. Barber. “This: ‘I own these pieces and will wear them for a long time’”

However, not all experts agree. “I think when an influencer aligns with a brand, its commercialism distorts the message,” said Elaine Ritch, a senior lecturer in marketing at Glasgow Caledonian University.

Perhaps the reason a lot of slow fashion content looks disingenuous is because of the platform it’s delivered to. Once a real place of connection, social media now exists primarily to sell both products and personalities. Even the most candid posts about social causes can seem misplaced online. In other words, the problem is the medium, not the message.

This does not mean that the message is meaningless. According to Ms. Mayer, much of her work is about re-imagining what the future might look like – a world where fashion doesn’t require the qualifier “sustainable” because it already values ​​labor and the environment – but it’s about re-imagining what the future might look like. easy.

“It’s incredibly difficult to work in the fashion industry while advocating for the fashion industry to end somehow,” said Ms. TerHart.