Made in the Philippines
Culture as a key factor in circular fashion offerings
On one of my mom’s quests to fill the balikbayan box — a large care package filled with gifts sent to family in the Philippines — we headed to Mervyn’s, a now defunct department store in Anaheim, California. Amidst the sea of circular clothing racks, a men’s shirt catches her eye. She pulls the shirt off the rack and holds it up for inspection. She’s pleased with it until she reads the label: Made in the Philippines. “Ay!” she says, then quickly returns the shirt back to the rack. While initially puzzled, what I came to learn was that new, American-made clothes are what we send “back home.” This went for shoes as well and explained the paper foot stencils from family members in the Philippines, which my mom would carry in her purse and slip into sneakers for size. Buying new, American-made was not only a manifestation of values and tastes shaped by U.S. colonization, but also granted access to goods otherwise not available in the Philippines. Ultimately, it was a symbol of the balikbayan’s care for their family back home.
In the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s webinar series From Linear to Circular: Open to All, Vigga Svensson, a pioneer of the circular clothing subscription service model, spoke about lessons learned in launching Vigga, the world’s first children’s circular brand. Based in Denmark, Vigga upends the linear model of clothing production and consumption by offering high quality, durable and sustainable children’s clothing that can be reused as children outgrow them. When posed with questions about the acceptance of a circular retail model for children — in essence, Do you really want to rent clothes for your baby? Don’t people really prefer to own? — Svensson says:
“[C]ulture is one of the key elements in a circular retail model. We need to understand and be expert in how people engage with clothing — the culture around clothing. [W]hen we look all over the world, there is no generic market that we can just apply to all countries and all cultures. It will be very different from culture to culture.”
Svensson cited emerging research that suggests varying acceptance of a circular retail model based on socioeconomic status and awareness of sustainability issues. For people living in poverty, for example, buying new things for their children equates with love. “It’s a way of paying attention to your child,” said Svensson. In contrast, people in affluent, Western cultures, who might also be more aware of sustainability issues, appear to be more open to sharing and the circular retail model.
Consumer acceptance of circular offerings is critical for the transition to the circular economy. This is especially true for the fashion industry, which, second only to the oil industry, is the world’s largest industrial polluter. The fashion industry produces nearly 10% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, 20% of the world’s water pollution waste, and 13 million tons of textile waste annually, 95% of which could be reused or recycled. Fast fashion — with the lure of low prices and being up-to-date on the latest trends — is largely to blame.
Attuned to how culture influences my own decision making, Svensson’s remarks sparked a curiosity about the research on cultural factors in user acceptance of circular fashion offerings. Researchers Juana Camacho-Otero, Casper Boks, and Ida Nilstad Petterson of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) identified culture as one of five categories of user acceptance factors in their studies of consumption in the circular economy. Others include: economic, demographic, psychosocial, and socio-material. Their findings point to gaps in understanding about the influence of culture on aspects of consumption, and call for future inquiries that combine digitally based, user-generated data sources with more traditional, ethnographic methods.
In their article Service design and circular economy in the fashion industry: Approaches to increase user acceptance of circular clothing models, service designer Ingrid Kongelf and circular economy expert Juana Camacho-Otero suggest that consumer advantages and disadvantages of fast fashion can inform user acceptance challenges in circular clothing models, and that service design approaches- which are human-centered and holistic- can lead to a better understanding of consumers. Empathizing with and co-creating solutions with diverse stakeholders is key to designing more attractive and ultimately broader acceptance of circular fashion models. As stated in the article:
“How we perceive clothes and address meaning to them have impacts on how we use and consume them, and this can influence the shift to more sustainable consumption practices.”
As one who cultivates learning for a living, I was heartened by how Svensson, when pressed for advice on starting a circular enterprise, stressed the importance of learning and understanding consumer motivations and behaviors, and to be agile based on these learnings. It’s interesting to ponder the nexus of socioeconomic and cultural factors in the acceptance of circular fashion offerings and how people engage with clothing. It’s what conjured the memory of shopping at Mervyn’s with my mom. It also challenges me to understand my professed reluctance to rent and my preference to own, which were no doubt shaped by that early experience and reinforced over the years by my first generation Filipino American culture. Yet, my engagement with clothing has also evolved due to life circumstances, a global outlook shaped each day by my work in homelessness and impact measurement, and my commitment to living more sustainably. Living with my life partner and tween twins in a two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, where closet space is a scarce commodity, influences every clothing purchase decision I make. Living in a six-unit building where the trash room overflows in the span of less than 24 hours has fueled my own household’s zero-waste journey. Emptying out my parents’ 3,850 square foot house after my mom passed away — making game-time decisions about letting go of her clothes, which were so tied to her identity, and things that had been in our lives for decades — also affected me profoundly.
Today, I’m trying to travel through life a lot lighter. My attitude toward clothing is fewer, better (also the tagline of one of my favorite brands), meaning that I would rather spend more on fewer high quality, sustainably produced clothing that I LOVE and wear them repeatedly for the long haul. Buying fewer also makes each purchase that much more “special.” Clothing is definitely a part of my identity and is a statement about what I stand for. I prefer to wear clothes that transcend short-lived trends, and support women designers and women-owned small businesses. I fall hard for artisanship and textile design. I do my best to understand where materials and labor were sourced to make my garments, and prefer brands that make this as transparent as possible. After all, I was taught early on to read the label, wasn’t I? Today when I see that a piece of clothing was made in the Philippines, I imagine the workers and their families, and I feel a sense of cultural pride and dignity for them. And I balk at low prices because I understand that the full cost is paid by disenfranchised and frontline communities, who are struggling financially and are usually people of color. As Rebecca Henderson points out in her book Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire, one of the reasons markets have gone off the rails is the fact that externalities are not properly priced. For example, “Fossil fuel energy looks cheap — but only because we’re not counting the costs we are imposing on neighbors and on the future.” The same could be said of fast fashion.
So what kind of circular fashion model might work for someone like me? Actually, Svensson covered a couple of intriguing and viable options in her discussion of circular business models. She described her and husband Peter‘s latest enterprise CONTINUED, a digital platform for circular fashion through which brands can facilitate take back and resell of products more than once. CONTINUED is a white label platform solution that integrates with a brand’s online channel. As a B-to-B solution, CONTINUED works behind the scenes to facilitate rental transactions through the brand’s sales channel or online shop, and also handles all the inventory and tracking of the clothing. The GANNI X LevisⓇ collaboration via GANNI Repeat is a recent example of this, where the two brands teamed up to create a collection of rentable upcycled pieces. I might consider something like this with one enhancement- tell me how many times the item had been rented out before or whether the item is new. But what really piqued my interest was learning about CONTINUED’s peer-to-peer resale model. Once again, the platform is integrated into a brand’s sales channel, but facilitates the transaction between the buyer and seller. It works like this: I buy a dress from a brand on their website. At check out, I’m offered to register my purchase for future resale purpose. I list my product on the platform, and all the product information and pricing is available. I don’t need to take and upload pictures. I don’t need to write a description or track down the original description. Anyone like myself who prefers to own and has ever sold clothing on Ebay knows what a pain this can be and must agree that this resale model is so incredibly brilliant. Moreover, unlike the rental model, there are no heavy logistics for CONTINUED because the transaction is handled individual-to-individual.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, one of the things I haven’t missed has been lugging a heavy tote bag to work on the subway. My shoulders are eternally grateful for it. We took to getting out on hikes and bike rides. So I capitulated to the fanny pack resurgence and invested in one by Cotopaxi — the Del Día Bataan hip pack — which I purchased online at Earth Hero. These days especially, I’m not so much checking tags as I am checking online product specifications. Earth Hero makes this super easy with Sustainability Features on every item, which includes information on origin, materials, end of life, certifications (e.g., whether the company is a B Corporation), Earth friendly features, and packaging. I was sold on the fact that this item was made in the Philippines using nylon left over from other companies’ large production runs. But what happily surprised me when I received my hip pack, which was named after a city in the Central Luzon region in the Philippines, was the Philippine sun emblazoned on the side of the pack and discovering that employees have creative control over the product’s color combinations. No two hip packs are alike. The Del Día Collection video on the website, which featured sewing operators in the Philippines and their contributions to the creative process, also struck a chord. It wasn’t until several weeks later when I finally noticed the label inside my hip pack. It read: Ipinagmamalaking gawang Pinoy. Made with pride in the Philippines. If my mom was still on Earth, I’m sure that even she would approvingly click the “Add to Cart” button.
