Fashion in turbulent times: new technologies meet new economic paradigms

The fashion industry is experiencing structural change as new manufacturing and distribution technologies emerge. Simultaneously, the environmental impact of garment production and the sector’s record on workers’ rights provokes increasing disquiet. This article explores how new technologies for distributing and making clothes interact with a shifting industrial policy agenda as neoclassical and neoliberal economic paradigms lose their dominance, and state intervention becomes fashionable again.

Contemporary ready-to-wear production, which relies on manufacturing goods speculatively in hope that they will meet consumers’ needs, is massively wasteful, and the sector has experienced a series of shocks as established brands fail to correctly anticipate demand. Online-bespoke – in which garments are made to the specifications of the customer – has emerged as a promising sector. In changing how we buy and produce garments, can we transform how we value our clothes, the resources from which they are composed, and how we value the people who make them?

This article argues that in order to reap the benefits of new and disruptive technologies, national governments and multilateral organizations must develop industrial strategies to shift current market incentives. Protections for fledgling sustainable and technologically innovative fashion brands, along with Pigovian taxation (taxation targeting negative externalities like pollution), are required to transform the industry.