Documentaries as instruments of sustainable fashion promotion

Authors

  • Mirela Holy Veleučilište VERN

Keywords:

sustainable fashion, fast fashion, documentaries, propaganda techniques

Abstract

Sustainable fashion is socially and environmentally responsible fashion, economically
successful and ethical in relation to nature, other living beings and people. The results of the research of Croatian designers’ attitudes regarding the concept of sustainable fashion have shown that most of the respondents get acquainted with this concept through documentaries (Holy & Borčić, 2018), which is not surprising because there are many attractive documentaries on the topic of fast fashion unsustainability and promotion of sustainable concepts in the fashion industry. The paper explores how six documentary films frame the concept of sustainable fashion and the concept of fast/cheap fashion, which emotional appeals are used in films, how narrative is constructed and how fashion in general is presented. Content analysis was conducted on the following documentaries: True Cost, The Next Black, Slow Down Fast Fashion, Unravel, River Blue and Do we change it? Ethical fashion documentary. Research has shown that documentaries about the fashion industry use manipulative persuasion techniques but insufficiently integrate audiences, which can affect their effectiveness.

Published

2022-01-28