What Is It and How Does It Affect The Fashion Industry?

Those interested in sustainable fashion may have heard of the term “green wash“, action irresponsibly using the environment as marketing. The phrase was born from companies that went “green” as a result of the environmental movement that built momentum in the mid-60s. Soon after, it was labeled by former Madison Avenue advertising executive Jerry Mander as “ecopornography.”

A term with a similar corporate motive is “wash-up”, where ethically troubled companies use social movements to increase sales without discussing how their business is involved. Mid 2020, the term gained momentum after becoming the focus of the Slow Factory Foundation open education program, with online lectures from Aja Barber, a writer and consultant focused on the intersection of fashion with feminism, race, and colonialism. Barber compares wake-washing to wakeness because greenwashing is a true environmental policy. “I really hope ‘wash-up’ becomes a household term, especially as ‘greenwashing’ is starting to become exactly that,” he said. Teen Vogue. In the fashion industry, washing up can look like Kendall Jenner’s controversial Pepsi commercial, co-opting the protest movement and not treating the issue of police brutality in the US with the weight it deserves. But Barber says wash-up goes far beyond the Black Lives Matter movement. “Pride has been co-opted for years.”

This is something he is well aware of, setting an example in our society of the co-optation by brands of the Black Lives Matter movement. “It seems everyone pretends to support black people while never actually offering the kind of support black people want or need,” he said. “I found all the Black Boxes in June [of 2020] become more equal but even more sinister because it’s really churning out social media algorithms, which are honestly about marketing more than anything else.”

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Céline Semaan, executive director of the Slow Factory Foundation, also lists the black box social media moment as one that made the “sustainable tokenization of the BIPOC community” even more real. With the Slow Factory Open Education session, Semaan hopes to focus on best practices and encourage companies to do better rather than “cancel and disobey”.

Wash-up is bigger than a single company act and a major part of white supremacist, says Barber. “People who are marginalized are still not included while the movement is being commodified for mass consumption,” he explained. Arguably, this is evident through fast fashion brands not handling them adequately workers rights issues. Based on Fashion Revolution, there are 75 million textile workers worldwide and about 80% of them are women between the ages of 18 and 35 years.

Identifying and discussing the term wake-washing is an important part of dealing with problems and finding solutions, says Barber. With this new language, he encourages readers to “look at what the brand is really doing for the people who make their clothes,” as a way to avoid the handwashing trap in fashion. “I tell people to hold brands accountable and look for evidence of good deeds instead of fancy marketing around good deeds,” he said. “Once you start looking into this, it becomes easier to sort the truth from the bullshit.”

Barber encourages consumers to question whether a company engages in wash-up versus substantive change, including asking about ethnic details of the organization and social advocacy for garment workers. As for brands, she calls on companies across the fashion industry to share their strengths with others to create a fair and sustainable movement that moves beyond consciousness. “Don’t just hire BIPOC, listen to our ideas and create a safe space to receive feedback and criticism for things that haven’t been handled well in the past,” says Barber. “It’s better to apologize before you fall on your sword in public.”

He also said that brands joining movements like Black Lives Matter should make sure they don’t try and change the message in any way. “If you can’t post Black Lives Matter because you still think of it as a controversial phrase in your organization, you shouldn’t take your place that way near the movement,” Barber added, in response to a number of brands using the term “inclusive” that sounds nonsensical. condemn white supremacy and state explicitly that Black Lives Matter.

While wake-washing is still relatively new to public dialogue, it is the start of what should be a larger conversation about holding brands accountable for matching their company’s actions to the values ​​they face in public. If you’re concerned about hand washing and want to make sure you’re supporting a minority community that benefits from brands, Barber says shop less and shop less. “Spread your money,” he said. “The monopolies that certain brands have don’t serve anyone.”

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Originally Appeared in Teen Vogue