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Op-Ed | A Sustainability Solution for Fashion: Sell Signifiers, Not Stuff

Better manufacturing processes won’t solve fashion’s sustainability problem, but brands could decouple the social signifiers they fundamentally sell from physical goods and reassign them to immaterial products like media experiences, argues Aaron Chamberland.
Louis Vuitton has collaborated with Riot Games' League of Legends to create branded virtual assets for the video game
Louis Vuitton has collaborated with Riot Games' League of Legends to create branded virtual assets for the video game. Louis Vuitton.
By
  • Aaron Chamberland

The fashion industry seems to think it can solve its sustainability problem with manufacturing processes that are more environmentally friendly: more efficient supply chains, more organic materials, less toxic dyes, and so on. The assumption is that the way to become more green is to keep on making more stuff, but doing it in a different way.

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