I am not rich enough to work on sustainable fashion

Reflections on post growth fashion and money

Friends, I want to start by apologizing for this long break between my posts. I have a dozen drafts started with great ideas I wanted to share but the past month just did not feel like writing at all as I had to muster all of my courage to face the simple fact that I am not rich enough to work on the topic of post growth fashion. I have to throw a white flag and admit my defeat in trying to take a path that is closed to me, a first-generation imigrant who comes from a family of teachers and does not have a Rotschield grandpa.

My little story of failure

We all are trying to make a good impression of our work online: sharing news of promotions, work events we took part in or things we were interviewed for. Like Americans automatically respond “I’m fine” to “How are you?”, most people try to look and act cool on social media, even if their work or life is crumbling.

When I started telling colleagues around me recently that I was about to leave academic research because I simply could not secure funding to continue working on the topics that matter, with few exceptions people sounded surprised. Apparently, it looks like I have my sh*t together. If anything, people told me, I look like an inspiration for others who are struggling.

Last year alone, interviews with me appeared in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Tribune de Geneve and multiple times on RTS (Swiss TV and radion channel). I gave a keynote speech on Fashion and the City at a UN webinar and developed a full 1h30 lecture on Post Growth Fashion at the Amsterdam Institute of Fashion. Public interest and demand for data, scientific findings and objective analysis is through the roof.

As flattering as it is, however, being an inspiration does not pay the bills. I have been tirelessly applying for funding to work on sustainable fashion consumption for the past five years, talking to anyone who would listen - only to be left with dozens of rejections, including seven from the Swiss National Science Foundation and one from Horizon 2020, which each take months to prepare. There is clearly a gap between where research is needed and where public money is flowing.

Since March, I received, one after another, five negative funding decisions. And at this point in my life, I can no longer justify working for free or almost for free - to my family or to myself. With all the peer recognition and moral support, I had to admit to myself that I was in a situation of precarious employment that has a devastating effect on my self esteem and my morale.

Doing good does not pay

Job satisfaction depends on many factors, and having an impact on the world is one of the main motivational drivers for many, especially among the millennials and Gen Z. In this regard, working on sustainable fashion is, undoubtedly, a highly attractive endeavor. I get dozens of messages every month from students and early career professionals asking about job opportunities and for advice on how to work on sustainable fashion. Motivation to do good is strong - which is wonderful.

However…

Another key motivational driver is money. Our society equates pay with value and praises the wealth putting the rich on the covers of magazines. Even if you do not aspire to become the next Elon Musk, fair pay for the work done is an important indication of the value that you create for society and is an critical element of our work satisfaction. Without pay, no matter how important the mission is to you and to the world, most of us not so rich people simply cannot go on saving the world.

It’s not just me

Money issues seem to be universal for people who work on sustainable fashion, be it in research, in businesses, grass root initiatives, or non-governmental organisations. Mostly women, passionate advocates and practitioners of sustainable fashion who are actually trying to do the right thing are getting shut down and burnt out. The closure of Mara Hoffman, a sustainability pioneer since 2014, is the latest in a devastating trend of sustainable fashion brands going out of business - while SHEIN and TEMU rise.

As a sustainable fashion start up founder myself, I have first hand knowledge of how difficult it is to attract investment into an apparel brand that does not promise to become a billion dollar company in three years. Venture capital is controlled almost entirely by men and they invest in other men who promise to make them rich by developing another tech miracle solution for a problem we didn’t even know we had. (Did you know that women-run businesses account for roughly 2% of all venture capital investment?:) These tech start ups take millions in funding, burn through cash in a year or two and then disappear. While women-led ethical businesses struggle to scale.

In research, it is as bad. As a founder of the International research network on Sustainable Fashion Consumption, I have been exchanging with dozens of researchers from around the world (but it’s almost exclusively the Global North). Most people are not funded to study fashion consumption; they are paid to teach or to do other research that can help the industry sell more stuff - and they have to sneak in impartial research that focuses on topics that are not relevant to business. I have numerous colleagues, some really brilliant, too, who find themselves in the same situation as I do.

Where does public funding go?

When it comes to research, it seems like there is no or almost no money to do research on sustainable fashion unless it is about (1) technological innovation / new materials or (2) it helps brands sell more stuff.

To get funding, researchers usually go to ask national and regional scientific foundations and programs, like Horizon Europe. These are public funds that are there to ensure that scientific findings that are produced are objective and do not have any conflict of interest.

If we look at the funding programs at the EU that cover sustainability and fashion, they are focused almost exclusively on new materials and innovation. For example, 14 million Euros for “novel, sustainable and circular textiles” research in 2023 or the most recent EU co-funded “Textiles of the future” launched in March 2024. These calls support a very narrow vision of the transformation that also happens to be the most convenient one for the fashion industry: the vision that we can innovate our way to “sustainability”.

This vision conveniently gets the problem wrong. It is not the materials that are unsustainable, it’s the volumes. Efficiency gains are simply not going to get us where we need to go on time. We need sufficiency and we need to figure out SOON how to reduce material throughput of the fashion system. This inquiry cuts deep into the very fabric of capitalism and challenges the status quo. Figuring out how to implement sufficiency into policy and business is a difficult exercise for sure which is bound to produce results that will be inconvenient for the current fashion system.

What does the lack of public funds mean for post growth fashion?

Lack of funding for independent scientific research on post growth fashion is alarming. Without critical research inputs that do not depend on the industry profit KPIs, public policies developed on the basis of the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles will represent an extension of the status quo with some marginal tweaks like “more innovation” or “better materials”.

In an ideal world, we should have a system of checks and balances when it comes to shaping the future through policies and laws. And academic research in this scheme plays a special role of an impartial advisor that is there for the betterment of the world. If this independent status is not supported by public funds, we will end up with very sad results - for the society and for the planet.

Transitioning towards post growth scenarios in fashion means, among other things, a lot of cooperation among decentralized networks of stakeholders. It requires non-profit circular business models to mushroom and flourish. It requires solid research on the future of consumption and production. And it definitely requires targeted funding to support these initiatives that are currently in a dangerous space, unprotected from predatory ultra fast fashion competition and from.

Your support matters to me

Does this mean that I quit? No. I am stubborn and I will continue to work on post growth fashion narratives on this blog.

But I am realizing now that my work on the post growth fashion book will likely be something I do at nights or on weekends, as a passion project that I really care about and want to complete - as opposed to being a result of a funded scientific project, as it should be.

Please sign up as a paid subscriber if you can to support this work! Every person counts to me and every contribution makes it a bit easier to go on as I see your interest and support.