The Morality of Fashion

Moral Maze

BBC

Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality

4.5 • 609 Ratings

🗓️ 11 July 2019

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Some of the stars of this year’s Glastonbury festival have joined the chorus of campaigners denouncing ‘throwaway fashion’. They’ve given some of their own clothing to Oxfam and are encouraging their fans to buy their outfits second-hand (or ‘pre-cherished’). These days you can buy a dress for a fiver and wear it once before chucking it away. Is that proof that capitalism has gone too far? Critics of the industry cite the appalling conditions and rates of pay in the third-world factories churning out garments that will end up as non-biodegradable landfill quicker than you can say “sustainability”. There are those, on the other hand, who prefer not to be lectured by celebs famous for their multiple costume changes and who point out that the minimum wage doesn’t run to a wardrobe of high-quality clobber. Beyond the social and environmental implications of fast fashion, what about the moral value of clothes themselves? We humans have covered our nakedness ever since Adam and Eve embarrassed themselves in the Garden of Eden. Fashion lovers say that our clothes matter because they are expressions of an aesthetic sensibility, intrinsic to both self-esteem and dignity. Others believe the fuss about this season’s ‘look’ is a cynical manipulation of insecurity and a celebration of vanity and superficiality. The morality of fashion: fashionably moral.

Producer: Dan Tierney

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to a programme from BBC Radio 4.
0:04.7	Good evening, we've been stuck with fashion since the first cavewoman twirled in her still bloody saber-tooth tiger skin
0:11.3	and asked her beetle-browed partner, does my bum look big in this? Or grunts to that effect.
0:17.6	Now it's a great global industry, dedicated not so much to covering our nakedness
0:21.3	as giving expression to our artistic sense of self, or manipulating our insecurities to make
0:27.4	lots of money. Take your pick, Pretaporte. Either way, the climate change warriors reckon our
0:32.9	vanity is ruining the planet. It's a throwaway culture at the cheap end, very cheap, a dress for less
0:38.5	than a fiver, costs more to have it delivered, knocked up in third world factories by workers
0:43.1	on third world wages to wear wants and waste. Most fast-fashioned clothes end up in landfill within
0:48.7	the year. The textile industry puts out more greenhouse gases than all the world's ships and aircraft combined.
0:55.7	Last weekend at Glastonbury, the stars denounced throwaway fashion,
1:00.0	gave some of their clothes to Oxfam and told their fans to buy second-hand.
1:04.8	Leave aside the unworthy thought that these spoilt kings and queens of excess
1:08.9	might not be the ideal cheerleaders for charity shop
1:12.3	conservation chic, have they got a point? Is fashion a worthwhile part of our aesthetic
1:18.4	sensibility essential to our dignity and self-esteem? Or a planet destroying con, exploiting
1:24.0	those who make it and those who buy it by appealing to our shallow neediness.
1:29.5	The morality of fashion. Amarlemais tonight. The panel, Melanie Phillips, social commentator at the Times.
1:34.0	Ella Wheelan, writer on feminism and author, incidentally, of what women want? The chief executive of
1:40.1	the RSA, Matthew Taylor, and the priest and polemicist Giles Fraser. Ella, what do women want
1:45.7	fashion at any cost? Well, certainly I like fashion as a shallow endeavour and I have a shallow
1:51.1	neediness for it, but I'm deeply sceptical of the moral fashion for pointing the finger at greedy,
	...

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