From Entangled Threads to New Weaves: Rethinking Fashion for Sustainability

This paper examines the contemporary mutated fashion system, in which boundaries between high and mass fashion are blurred and the logics of art, commerce, and sustainability have become increasingly interwoven. Drawing on an institutional perspective and employing a theory synthesis approach, we weave conceptual threads from fashion and business studies to examine how these logics intersect, overlap, and compete. By unpacking fashion's symbolic and material value and analyzing the dynamics of the contemporary fashion system, we show that an emphasis on material value conceals the symbolic mechanisms through which garments become obsolete, often long before their material value is depleted. Furthermore, we demonstrate that luxury and slow fashion should not be exempt from scrutiny, as these sectors frequently reproduce the exploitative and growth-driven structures characteristic of mass fashion. The paper contributes to macromarketing scholarship by advancing a critical, integrative understanding of sustainability within a market ideology dependent on perpetual growth.