Sustainability Doesn’t Exist Under Colonialism

Back in 2018, during the Trump administration, I wrote a piece for The Cut titled “Understanding Sustainability Means Talking About Colonialism.” It was the first time mainstream fashion media began to publicly confront the uncomfortable but essential truth: that conversations about eco-friendly fashion cannot be separated from the colonial systems that built and continue to sustain the industry. Beyond the $400 cashmere knits, there was—and still is—an elephant in the room.

By 2019, the phrase “sustainable fashion” had entered the mainstream lexicon, bolstered by efforts from collectives like Slow Factory, Fashion Revolution, and The True Cost. The pandemic and the 2020 uprising for Black Lives Matter catalyzed a larger cultural shift, pushing sustainability to embrace more systemic critiques—including colonialism. Campaigns like Re/Make’s “Pay Up” called attention to the exploitation of garment workers in the Global South, while Slow Factory organized United Nations conferences urging global brands and elected officials to confront forced labor and supply chain opacity. There was momentum. There was hope.

But that hope began to unravel. By 2023, the movement hit a critical litmus test: Palestine. The same industry that embraced diversity, equity, and inclusion at the peak of 2020 suddenly fell silent. Even during its strongest moments, the sustainable fashion movement was already showing cracks—rife with false accusations, horizontal hostility, and green influencers profiting off community language and labor while offering little in return. The expectation of “purity” within activist spaces, combined with cancel culture, proved to be yet another expression of internalized colonialism.

Colonial values thrive on individualism. Once internalized, solidarity becomes transactional—conditional—and ultimately erodes community. I experienced this personally, having contributed significantly to this movement only to face harassment and eventual ostracization. Still, October 2023 marked a turning point for many: the genocide in Gaza made clear that “business as usual” would do everything possible to remain centralized and unbothered. Product launches, celebrity fashion lines, and endless coverage of celebrity drama became tools of distraction, keeping the public focused anywhere but on the atrocities being livestreamed to our phones.

If the mainstream media truly reflected our times, it wouldn’t be obsessing over the Kardashians or Bezos’s trip to space—as if any of us could afford it, financially or environmentally. Sustainability has regressed, culturally and structurally, to a pre-2018 era: back to rarefied fabrics, $1,000 dresses, and white, blond models symbolizing a fictional eco-purity. The industry backslid, not just on sustainability, but also on representation—of diverse body types, trans and queer identities, Disabled models—all of which had barely begun to gain visibility before the pendulum swung backwards. We’re back to the early 1990s: neoliberal fashion aesthetics propped up by capitalistic expansion and global warfare.

Representation isn’t the end goal—but it matters. Visual storytelling shapes collective imagination. And when we are fed constant images of luxury, thinness, and fantasy while half the world starves—including in the richest country on Earth—and over 18,000 Palestinian children are killed by the Israeli military, we experience a cognitive rupture. For many, that rupture leads to apathy; for others, to escapist consumption. Fashion, after all, is a colonial tool: a mechanism for signaling status, aspiration, and exemption from harm.

Today, as genocide unfolds in Gaza and is witnessed in real time on TikTok and social media, Gen Z cannot be gaslit by legacy institutions or fashion’s old guard. And yet the industry doubles down—offering up puffy coats, sheer pants, or no pants at all. We watch the return of the skinny runway model, backed by Ozempic-fueled aesthetics, under the guise of style—but it’s hard not to see echoes of famine propaganda.

Sustainability cannot exist under genocide. It cannot exist under colonialism.

So we must ask: can an industry funded in part by wealth generated from weapons manufacturing ever truly reflect the times? Can fashion become sustainable by working toward system-wide change and divesting from oppression?

The answer depends on our willingness to redefine what constitutes risk—financial, cultural, and planetary. And on our ability to shift the culture through media, away from gaslighting and toward meaningful, community-driven solutions. It depends on honoring and centering Indigenous knowledge systems—those that have always known how to live in balance with the Earth—and dismantling the profit-first model that continues to destroy it.