ABSTRACT

Fashion embodies human pleasure, creativity, social codes and technologies that have enabled societies to prosper, laid burdens on the environment and caused competition for arable land. No single actor, action or technology is sufficient to shift us away from the environmental and social challenges embedded in the fashion industry – nor to meet the demands for sustainable development of society at large. However, scientific and technological developments are important for progress towards sustainable fashion. ‘Technology is indeed a queen: it does change the world’ (Braudel, 1981), but it is also socially constructed and embedded in society (Hughes, 1987).