Purpose: The rise of fast fashion has changed the face of global fashion. Despite sector growth, critics have questioned the level of obsolescence, encouragement of over-consumption and fast fashion's unsustainable business practices. Specifically, mounting concerns surround the impact on environmental, worker and animal welfare. Accordingly, the aim of this current work is to understand the influence of consumer's values on ethical consumption in a fast-fashion context.Design/methodology/approach: An online survey was designed to collect responses relating to personal values and ethical concerns towards animal and worker welfare issues, as well as environmental concerns. A total of 350 US-based fast-fashion consumers completed the survey via Amazon MTurk. Factor analyses and structural equation modelling were used to analyse and test a theoretically hypothesised model.Findings: This study found that self-transcendence values and openness to change values have a positive impact on consumers' levels of ethical concern towards animal welfare, the environment and worker welfare concerns within the fashion industry. Furthermore, a consumer's level of concern towards animal welfare and the environment positively influences a consumer's likeliness to purchase ethically marketed fast fashion.Originality/value: This is the first study to investigate the role of consumer values and their influence on ethical concerns within the fashion industry and the impact of these concerns on intentions to purchase ethically marketed fast fashion. Responding to calls for further research into ethical consumption of apparel, this study includes all elements of ethical consumption identified, including animal welfare. This study identifies ethical areas of concern salient amongst fast-fashion consumers and provides a deeper understanding of the values impacting the level of ethical concerns surrounding animal welfare, the environment and worker welfare.

This article traces several interwoven traditions of considering waste and its materiality within fashion practice. Waste in fashion is commonly considered a problem to be solved, whether through reduced consumption, improved production processes, or recycling and upcycling practices. While the pragmatic and effective “waste management” approaches are key to developing a sustainable fashion industry they can also distance and obscure the materiality of waste, and in doing so overlook the potency and poignancy that waste can have. As a counter-approach to the problems of waste, this article explores a poetic element that relates to an aesthetic of the worn and wasted, and a fashion practice that elevates rather than disguises waste. This is discussed through a case study of experimental fashion label Maison Briz Vegas, reflecting on time, place and waste.

The Anthropocene describes our current geological era, in which human activity has grown to become a planetary force. Interest in “sustainable fashion” reflects the necessity to address the social and environmental ills of fashion. Yet thinking on sustainable fashion remains chiefly industry and user-focused, examining narrow questions regarding how industry may shift practices, or how users may engage with fashion differently—hence only tacitly positioned within the context of the Anthropocene. Synthesizing scholarly and industry perspectives, this article establishes two positions on sustainable fashion, and aligns these with the philosophical positions of humanity’s future in the Anthropocene, adopting ethicist Clive Hamilton’s nomenclature. First, fashion’s Prometheans, the techno-optimists, propose a future in which cleaner technologies can lead to the gradual evolution of a better industry. In contrast, fashion’s Soterians take a cautionary approach, and seek to unbind fashion from the unsustainable growth imperative of capitalism itself. Under these two, the definition of “sustainable fashion” may differ, but, critically, their dialogue will shape the direction of fashion. Together, their actions create a “fashion futuring,” a dynamic process of negotiation between what I term the “taming” and the “rewilding” of fashion, within a world of our own making