ABSTRACT
The capabilities approach to evaluating well-being developed by Amartya Sen shifts the focus of attention away from goods to what goods enable human beings to achieve. Capabilities brings to the fore the idea that satisfying fashion provision and expression is only partly dependent on the market. It is, however, fully dependent on the webs of their relationships between garments and our beings and doings. Sustainability arises from maintaining and developing these relations, not the goods alone. It is relational not transactional; it is found in the connections between the elements, not in the production of commodities and their exchange. Mindfulness studies raise the prospect, as yet untested, that using fashion pieces with open attention and knowledge might lead us to want what people already have. There is agency here; the capacity for us, as individuals, to act with awareness to shape the fashion system differently.
