Fake remake: The role of the luxury fashion market in driving sustainable fashion practices

A main concern for researchers in the contemporary academic debate surrounding the development of more sustainable fashion design practices is to address the problems of consumerism and consumer behaviour. This chapter draws attention to the emergence of the faking of the remaking process by mainstream fashion brands to highlight how these damaging behaviours prolong and uphold unsustainable practices in the international fashion industry. Consumerism, the mass phenomenon of the 20th century, is a product of long-term historical changes and transformations and Fordism, according to Gabriel and Lang (2006), which embraced . both production and consumption, and transformed consumerism from the elite to the masses. Furthermore, in the early 1900s, new department stores developed planned obsolescence strategies to encourage consumers to replace goods in order to stimulate and perpetuate consumption (Sturken and Cartwright 2001). Within the new era of mass consumption and urbanisation, goods came in throwaway bottles, boxes, bags and cans, encouraging a cultural shift away from the virtues of thrift to the conveniences of consumerism.