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“Overconsumption is the most deadly ecological killer in contemporary times, and it is closely related to any problem of environmental pollution… let us calm down and present an ecological fable with the cover image story.”
Vogue Taiwan ran this beautiful but hard-hitting photo-shoot in their January 2025 edition as an “elegy to overconsumption”
Fashion as art drives a global business model that most visibly displays the excesses, and technologies, of our age. There is almost no textile, no shape, no embellishment too wild, too beautiful, for a designer and maker somewhere to fashion. At the same time, all humans require some kind of cover, from those in tropical forests requiring only the most simple covering for modesty and protection from thorns, to NASA astronauts and Olympic athletes requiring incredibly technical garments to perform their work. Since ancient times humans wore furs, leather, and simple woven fabrics made with wool and plant fibres for protection and later as adornment,
##to our cotton t-shirts, hemp jeans, silk and linen clothes
But with increasing use of petroleum-based plastics to manufacture cheap textiles – globally, about 60% of fabric used for clothing is synthetic (and not biodegradable), manufacturers churn out increasing quantities of cheap clothing. The low cost encourages faster consumption and discarding, and in wealthy countries, textile and apparel (T&A) waste has become an enormous burden.
What we wear is a fundamental aspect of our humanity – we cover our fragile nakedness, express ourselves, comply with societal norms, and strive for beauty…
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Where is our obsession with Fashion taking us all?
The need for something new and exciting to wear, for an event, an interview, or just to feel good about ourselves, has become a global obsession. And the post-event residue of once-worn cheaply made fast fashion, is literally burying us in polyesters.
Ports in Ghana, Burkina Faso or Côte d’Ivoire in Africa, and Chile, South America, have become dumping grounds for Europe’s unwanted recycled and donated clothes. This growing waste stream is pouring into informal second-hand clothes markets like Kantamanto, where 15 million imported items per week arrive by ship. Locals attempt to sort and monetise the waste by remaking and selling on any useable items, creating jobs for designers, makers, sellers, carriers, market staff. This is in direct competition to local textile and clothing manufacturers, threatening jobs in more formal businesses.
But 40 percent of the imported textiles and apparel (T&A) is unusable, dumped in landfill near the port spilling onto the beaches. These cairns of imported rubbish catch fire easily, and leach poisons, a dystopian future of fashion suggested by the Vogue Photographer Zhong Lin.
As Vogue Taiwan Editor-in-Chief Sun Yi said: “Overconsumption itself, and its impact on the earth, has caused environmental degradation, resource depletion, damage to ecosystems, and accelerated climate change. This idea, through the perspective of our long-term photography partner Zhong Ling, has given rise to a new prophecy about future habitats:
in a world where living land is limited due to rising sea levels, we become seasonal nomads, constantly migrating due to unpredictable weather. The plants and animals we once relied on for survival have disappeared, and when the soil cannot support life, we have to cultivate green plants on our bodies. We begin to carry our homes on our backs like snails.”
Ghana problem – tackling T&A waste
Credits for original article (here)
APAC Editorial Director: Leslie Sun
Photographer: Zhong Lin
Model: Zoe Fang
Stylist and Managing Fashion Editor: Chen Yu
Features Director and Text: Nicole Lee
Makeup: Sting Hsieh
Hair: Miley Shen
Gaffer: Yuanling Wang
Set Design: Setsation Studio
Producer: Nelly Yang
Zoe Fang身著黑色仿舊高跟襪靴 BALENCIAGA