Fashion Needs And Consumption: Immediate Environment

After discussing about my personal learnings and experiences, now let's move on and talk about the observations in my immediate environment. When I say immediate environment, I am referring to my family, society, state, culture etc. So, let's get started!

If I talk about my immediate environment, I have observed that some of them, specially the younger generation, are willing to try to make changes in their lives in order to protect the environment from further damage, but they were just not aware about it. While the rest of them just don't want to acknowledge the problems. And from what I have observed, most of the time is it our older generation who resist changing because they are comfortable with the way they are living right now. Also, because many of them believe it's important to maintain that identity and image in a society, for which they'll have to spend lavishly on good and dress up nicely all the time. In fact, it so happens that their kids learn the same behaviour from their parents. and they too, even though young, are unwilling to change because for them maintaining their image in society is far more important than protecting the environment. 

Apart from this, due to the various culture and festivals that our country has, we Indians also have the tendency to buy everything new for every other occasion. And due to this mindless consumerism, the designers are working to serve this mass market through changing trends with changing seasons. In turn, contributing to the pollution. But there's one good thing about our culture. I have observed that even though we buy a lot of stuff, we do use it to it's full potential. So, for example, if we get tired of our clothes, we either donate them or give it to those working for us. We also might use the clothes that are torn or can not be donated as rags for household use. But still, this doesn't mean that we can purchase anything we like anytime. We still have got to be mindful about our purchases since there's far more unwanted clothes than people in need. Don't get me wrong it's not like people are not changing at all, they are willing to make small changes if we educate them about it. It's just there's lack of awareness in our society!

And from what I have learned so far from my module, this was not the case always. We as a culture used to be more sustainable than anyone else, and we didn't have these fancy products. But things changed because of the influence from West and they are changing even today. Brands like H&M and Zara have captured the markets and introduced the concept of fast fashion to us due to which the pollution footprint has increased drastically. And it is indeed true if we look at our history. So I do think that we can go back to embracing our culture and become more sustainable if we just start looking back at our roots!