Sustainability in Fashion: An Oxymoron?

Abstract

The last few years have witnessed an increased interest in sustainable fashion and ethical practices within the fashion industry (Henninger et al. 2016). Sustainability is emerging as a so-called “megatrend” (Mittelstaedt et al. 2014) and in order to stay competitive more and more companies start to use catchwords like “sustainable”, “eco-friendly”, “social” or “ethical” in their marketing communications. But this overdosing of sustainability claims has the effect that consumers very often mistrust such claims, especially when they can’t verify the credibility.