Patagonia's most profound contribution to solving the crisis of second-hand clothing (SHC) doesn't happen when a garment is resold; it happens years earlier, before an item even becomes "second-hand." This is known as upstream intervention, and it is the foundation of the brand's ethical integrity.
The traditional second-hand market struggles because the majority of clothing—especially fast fashion—is designed as a disposable commodity. It's cheap to buy, quickly falls apart, and lacks the inherent value to justify repair. This low-quality design choice guarantees the garment will end up in the massive worldwide waste stream, quickly overwhelming charities, downcycling operations, or landfills.
Patagonia fundamentally breaks this cycle through a strategic commitment to:
Patagonia's main intervention happens before an item even becomes "second-hand."
This program manages the product's end-of-life responsibly, closing the loop within their own system:
Our finding notes, the key challenge is one of scale and structural economics:
In summary, Patagonia's Worn Wear Program is an ideal blueprint for a circular, ethical clothing model, but it exists outside the broken low-cost structure of the mass market. It is a solution, not a problem, in the SHC trade.
The Modern Day Eagle House serves as a potent metaphor. This metaphor highlights the continuous, worldwide struggle for fundamental female rights. Over a century ago, activists fought tirelessly for women's suffrage—the right to vote. That movement challenged who was recognized as a full legal citizen. Today, women in Saudi Arabia resist the male guardianship system (wilayah). This legal structure renders adult women perpetual minors. Both the fight for women's suffrage and the movement against wilayah share the same core demand: full legal and social agency.
The male guardianship system was a pervasive social and legal framework that defined a Saudi woman’s life from birth to death. It required the mandatory permission of a male guardian—who could be a father, husband, brother, or even a son—for crucial life decisions and milestones, including:
This system, a visible embodiment of female inequality, was thrust onto the worldwide stage in 2016 following a major Human Rights Watch report. This catalyst sparked an unprecedented wave of digital activism, a movement that built its own virtual organizing space.
During the women's suffrage movement, activist locations like Eagle House in Batheaston, Somerset, UK, served as physical headquarters for organizing, strategizing, and disseminating propaganda. Eagle House became known as the "Suffragette's Rest". It offered a sanctuary for prominent suffragettes. Including many who were recuperating after being released from prison following hunger strikes.
In 2016, the main headquarters for the anti-guardianship campaign was not a building, but the boundless, borderless realm of social media.
This virtual space became the modern "Suffragette's Rest": a location where Saudi women could organize, share forbidden stories anonymously, and appeal directly to worldwide opinion. Hashtags like #IAmMyOwnGuardian became the banners of this digital protest. Quickly gaining momentum and forcing the issue into international news cycles.
The digital commentary provided by Susan @GoogleExpertUK proved unexpectedly powerful. It measured the true potential to inspire direct action. The tweets detailed and criticized the immense control over women's lives. They were shared from an external platform and were not part of a coordinated campaign. Instead, a Saudi man came across the commentary. He was immediately moved to a high-risk act of spontaneous solidarity within the Kingdom.
The combined pressure from internal activists, the digital movement, and international scrutiny led to significant, though partial, steps toward dismantling the system:
Despite these critical gains, the fight for full legal parity continues. The core discriminatory elements remain: a guardian’s permission is still required for a woman to get married and to leave detention or a women's shelter.
"Laws are written on paper and paper can be burned!"
Elise Evans
The story of the man jailed for his act of solidarity—inspired by digital commentary and echoing the spirit of movements like women's suffrage—remains a powerful testament to the bravery required. To achieve the ultimate goal: the complete recognition of women as fully independent, sovereign citizens.
The Wellbeing Wardrobe is more than a concept; it is a declaration that female agency and Mother Earth health are inseparable. The Adas Army Intrepid Herstory Collective's dedication to uncovering marginalized narratives—from Inca queens to Somerset suffragettes—reveals a crucial, enduring truth: the fight for female agency is a universal, multi-dimensional struggle. This mission, particularly its focus on economic justice as championed by figures like the Budapest textile workers, finds powerful, necessary modern relevance.
This framework demands that we acknowledge a painful reality: sustainability and ethics are not optional marketing additions. They are non-negotiable foundations for a just society. Earth Logic argues that true sustainability is not about minor adjustments to a broken system but a complete systemic overhaul. Where the health of Earth governs all industrial ambition. This article explores how this transformative shift—from a Growth Logic to an Earth Logic—is absolutely essential for achieving the very economic and social fairness, including securing women's suffrage, that women have fought for throughout history.
The concept of a Wellbeing Wardrobe actively rejects the "Growth Logic" of fast fashion—a model that is inherently and tragically flawed. This paradigm insists on endless material production, rapid consumption cycles, and constant profit maximization. This system is not only ecologically destructive but is built upon the same structures of exploitation that the Collective seeks to expose and dismantle across centuries and continents.
The economic injustice is deeply rooted. The cheap, often shockingly low, prices of today's fast fashion are achieved by deliberately externalizing two categories of costs onto the most vulnerable groups. Firstly, garment workers who are predominantly women in the Global South, and the natural environment via pollution, waste, and resource depletion.
This echoes the historical economic injustice fought by the Budapest textile workers. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, these women organized, marched, and went on strike against inferior wages, dangerous working conditions, and patriarchal control over their lives. Their demand for fair compensation was not just a demand for money; it was a foundational demand for dignity, self-determination, and economic agency.
When a modern corporation sells a t-shirt for less than the cost of a cup of coffee, it is effectively repeating the same oppressive narrative, only on a global scale. The low price is a direct measure of the cost that has been unfairly pushed onto the marginalized worker and the rapidly deteriorating health of our Earth. The movement for the Wellbeing Wardrobe recognizes that exploitation of people and exploitation of Earth are two sides of the same economic coin.
The core thesis of the Earth Logic vs Growth Logic Action Research Plan is a total rejection of sustainability efforts—like the Circular Economy—that are still subservient to the goal of economic growth. Fletcher and Tham contend that tinkering with efficiency is not enough to meet the uncompromising deadline of a decade for meaningful environmental action. The scale of reduction required is massive (Factor 4 to Factor 20), necessitating not just better recycling, but fundamentally LESS production and consumption.
The six principles of Earth Logic offer the necessary systemic roadmap.
Earth Logic’s most urgent and non-negotiable principle is LESS: Grow out of growth.
This is the key to solving modern exploitation in the fashion system. If a brand must sell vastly less product to protect planetary boundaries, it is compelled to abandon the fast-fashion model. This shift forces a return to a business model that charges a fair, reflective price per item. This sustainable pricing structure is what finally allows for ethical, living wages, safe working conditions, and robust, traceable supply chains. Thus honoring the historical struggle for labor rights championed by the Budapest workers. Sufficiency becomes the new standard of success.
The principle of PLURAL: New centres for fashion demands that we decolonize the fashion system. It insists on shifting the focus away from the Western, Eurocentric ideal of what constitutes "fashion" and "value."
This concept resonates deeply with the Collective's commitment to recognizing Inca queens and the sophisticated, sustainable, and highly artistic textile traditions of indigenous communities. PLURAL demands that local, traditional, and nature-based knowledge—and the complex, high-skill labor of these communities—be respected and compensated fairly. It ensures that the power of textile creation returns to the communities who live in harmony with the resources. Directly challenging the extractive practices of centralized, worldwide corporations. It is a demand that cultural power (like that of the Inca Queen) dictates commerce. Not the other way around.
The fight for economic justice meets the political voice here. We must reform industry GOVERNANCE toward care, not just profit. This echoes the historical struggle of the Somerset suffragettes. They demanded a political say in their future. This was essential to ensure their interests were properly represented.
A modern mirrored need exists today. We need governance that serves the Earth and its people. It must not merely serve corporate growth. This critical shift centers vulnerable voices. This includes garment workers across the globe. It also focuses on people who are homeless. These groups are often overlooked in the economic system.
Earth Logic governance changes the rules of success. It places planetary health above corporate returns. Decisions on resource allocation must change. They must align with industrial ethics and planetary limits. This framework uses the well-being of the most marginalized as a key success metric. This ensures a sustainable and just outcome for everyone.
The principle of LEARNING focuses on cultivating the practical skills and ecological literacy needed for an Earth-First future. This includes promoting skills like mending, repairing, customizing, and caring for existing clothes.
This focus on skill and longevity directly attacks the disposable mindset fueled by Growth Logic. By valuing the time, craftsmanship, and materials in a garment, the consumer is forced to acknowledge and honor the skill and labor of the textile worker. It is an act of intellectual agency. Akin to the foresight of Ada Lovelace who saw the potential of a machine beyond simple calculation. This generation must see the potential of a garment beyond simple consumption.
Ultimately, the transition to a Wellbeing Wardrobe is a profound act of social and economic justice. It is not just about choosing sustainable fabrics; it is about choosing a value system that:
We use these inter-generational and worldwide stories to assert that economic empowerment, intellectual recognition, and political freedom are all interwoven. The women who organized in 20th-century Budapest for fair wages are the ancestors of the modern movement fighting for regenerative, ethical fashion. By applying common sense and logic, we can finally fulfill their wish for a world built on fairness and care.
The Earth Logic vs Growth Logic Plan framework is built on a non-negotiable shift away from the current economic model toward one that prioritizes Earth's health.
The plan's starting point is a paradigmatic shift from Growth Logic to Earth Logic. The authors fundamentally reject the dominant notion that economic prosperity and endless material growth can coexist with ecological stability. They argue that the fashion system's relentless pursuit of quarter-to-quarter growth is the core driver of the environmental crisis.
In terms of structure, the Earth Logic Action Research Plan is organized into three distinct parts designed to move research from philosophical intention to practical implementation.
This section establishes the ethical foundation and core values that must underpin all research and action under the Earth Logic banner. These values serve as a moral and evaluative framework to ensure research remains radically transformative and centered on planetary care.
This section acts as an acute checklist for researchers and practitioners. It provides guiding points for consideration to keep action research focused on systemic, radical change. It also addresses the emotional and political difficulties inherent in challenging the dominant Growth Logic paradigm. Offering practical advice for navigating resistance and maintaining momentum.
This section outlines six key areas for the comprehensive, whole-system transformation of the fashion sector. These are systemic focal points where fundamental change must occur.
This is the non-negotiable foundation. It focuses on the imperative of living with fewer fashion goods and materials. The authors explicitly state that because no technological or recycling solution can handle the current volume of resource extraction, "The only solution is less stuff. There are no other options." Research here focuses on cultures of sufficiency, minimalism, and anti-consumption.
This landscape calls for a radical reorganization of power and production. It involves shifting control away from centralized global brands and establishing localized, place-specific fashion economies. Here, environmental and community priorities dictate industrial ambition, ensuring production respects local ecosystems, resources, and social needs rather than worldwide market demands.
This aims to decolonize the fashion system by shifting the focus away from the Western, consumerist, and often patriarchal ideal of what fashion is. It explores what fashion can be from diverse and currently marginalized viewpoints. Including feminist, indigenous, craft-based, and nature-based perspectives, validating all forms of clothing creation and meaning.
This focuses on cultivating the intellectual and practical capital needed for an Earth-First future. This includes learning essential practical skills, such as care, mending, and customization. Unlearning the damaging consumption habits of the past. Aquiring deep ecological literacy, understanding local ecosystems and material lifecycles.
This addresses how change is communicated. It calls for using new communication methods, such as non-verbal and non-visual. Also activist knowledge sharing to advance rapid, urgent change. The goal is to articulate the Earth Logic response in ways that motivate action and bypass the greenwashing inherent in current marketing language.
This involves reformulating the industry's entire operating structure. It moves away from governance systems focused on maximizing economic growth and profit toward models centered on care, maintenance, and sufficiency. This Earth Logic vs Growth Logic landscape suggests new organizational forms that ensure governance explicitly serves Earth and its inhabitants first.
Credit: This article's discussion on systemic change in fashion was inspired by the work and knowledge shared by Dr. LeeAnn Teal Rutkovsky.
Historian, researcher, and dedicated author Helen G. Pugh is set to release the paperback edition of her ambitious new work, On This Day in Somerset: A Calendar of Women, on November 3rd. This book offers a compelling and deeply researched exploration of her home county. Celebrating a unique and noteworthy woman connected to Somerset for every single day of the year. Spanning over 2,000 years—from pre-Roman times right up to the modern day—the book transforms regional history into a personal, daily journey.
The project is the latest, highly focused effort in Pugh's ongoing mission to ensure that "herstory" is given equal, prominent space alongside traditional "history." She meticulously researches and writes to pull remarkable women from the obscurity or footnotes that often accompany conventional historical records. Giving women the voice and recognition they deserve.
The calendar format is designed to make the county's rich heritage highly accessible. Allowing readers to engage directly with history by discovering the significant woman associated with their own birthday or any other special date.
This approach highlights the sheer diversity of female experience and contribution within a single geographical area. The subjects featured in the book are incredibly varied. Showcasing a blend of real-life figures and powerful legends. They include women from diverse backgrounds, interests, and occupations. Many of whom were unrecognised or even actively marginalized during their lifetimes.
For the Wellington and surrounding area, the book includes local narratives such as a tenacious war victim, a tireless local fundraiser, and a committed humanitarian worker. Firmly anchoring the county’s vast history in relatable, human stories.
On This Day in Somerset serves as the chronological companion to Pugh’s highly praised 2023 title, Unsung Women in Somerset. Both works demonstrate her core passion for uncovering marginalized histories.
Pugh is widely known for her dedication to correcting historical erasure. A theme she has explored worldwide in her other major works, including:
Whether she is spotlighting an Andean empress or a local suffrage activist, Helen G. Pugh consistently champions the idea that quality research must be used to restore female agency to the historical record. Ensuring that these remarkable contributions are acknowledged and celebrated.
Discover 366 days of women who shaped Somerset history
A daily calendar of local heroines, from suffragettes to spies.
By Helen G. Pugh.
On This Day in Somerset: A Calendar of Women will be available in paperback from November 3rd.
The Peoples Hub have just pre-ordered a copy!
The fashion industry, often associated with fast fashion and environmental concerns especially through greenwashing, is undergoing a slow transformation. Social enterprises around the world are emerging as powerful forces for good, using fashion as a tool to empower communities, promote sustainability, and create positive change. Let's embark on a worldwide journey to explore some of these inspiring businesses:
Empowering People Through Fashion:
Sustainable Fashion for a Greener Future:
Innovation and Social Impact:
Join the Movement: Be the Change You Want to See in Fashion
The rise of social enterprises in fashion empowers you to make a difference with every purchase. Here's how you can get involved:
By supporting social enterprise and fashion, you're not just buying clothes or accessories; you're investing in a more ethical, sustainable, and equitable fashion industry. Together, we can stitch together a better future for fashion and the world.
Helen G. Pugh’s historical research consistently champions the idea that "herstory" is a worldwide tapestry woven from the threads of female resilience—whether that is the political power of an Inca queen or the activism of a Somerset suffragette. To further branch out the narrative of the Intrepid Herstory Collective, we can draw a direct thematic line from the fight for the vote in Britain to the complex, class-divided struggle for women’s political and economic rights in the late Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The core link? The working woman who understood that economic equality could not exist without political power.
In Hungary, the struggle for women's suffrage was less noisy than the explosive campaign led by the British Suffragettes. However, it was deeply significant. This movement was characterized by two parallel, yet often distinct, forces:
The Middle-Class Feminists (The FE)
Led by educated women, often from the Jewish bourgeoisie, groups like the Feministák Egyesülete (FE – Hungarian Feminist Association) championed equal political rights and educational reform. Key figures like Rózsa Schwimmer (Rosika Bédy-Schwimmer) were highly active, pushing for suffrage through publications, petitions, and international congresses. Their primary focus was on legally challenging patriarchal norms and gaining access to universities and the political sphere.
The Proletarian Movement (The Textile Workers)
Unlike the middle-class feminists, the majority of Hungarian women found their voice in the labor movement. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw rapid industrialization. The textile and light manufacturing industries became massive employers of female labor. With women making up to 86% of the workforce in garment factories.
The factory floor became a crucial battleground. These women faced grueling shifts, inferior earnings, and dangerous conditions, leading to widespread strikes and organized labor protests. In cities like Budapest and Vienna, women's mass participation in these industrial actions became a political force. Driven by basic economic necessity.
The crucial connection—and the new thematic thread for the Collective—lies in the occasional collaboration between these two groups. Adding a vital layer to the Herstory Worldwide Tapestry:
By focusing on the Austro-Hungarian working woman in the textile industry, the Intrepid Herstory Collective highlights the universal truth woven into the Herstory Worldwide Tapestry. That the fight for female agency is never one-dimensional: it is a convergence of demands for cultural power (Inca queens), women's suffrage and political rights (Somerset suffragettes), and economic justice (Budapest textile workers).
Local Slow Sustainable Fashion is the core argument of this 2022 book, edited by Ingun Grimstad Klepp and Tone Skårdal Tobiasson. They argue that the future of clothing isn't in high-tech solutions, but in a radical return to localized production. Valuing natural resources—especially wool—and abandoning the addiction to endless growth.
This edited collection goes beyond traditional fast fashion debates to make a powerful case for the agriculturally-based fiber and textile industry. It highlights how local, small-scale operations, coupled with a direct connection to soil health, can drive transformative change.
The research draws heavily on studies of Norwegian wool (the four-year KRUS project), as well as similar work in Poland and Portugal. Crucially, the book broadens the conversation by exploring the role of women and incorporating Indigenous perspectives—including Sámi, Inuit, and First Nations voices—to show how ancient, traditional wisdom offers modern solutions.
Sheep must be shorn for their welfare, yielding a valuable, renewable fiber. But because shearing costs surpass the wool's price, the EU industry trashes the majority of raw wool—a crisis of magnitude that the book aims to solve.
The editors argue that the worldwide textile industry is in an environmental crisis due to decades of:
The philosophy of Local Slow Sustainable Fashion directly confronts the modern clothing industry's hyper-globalized supply chain. While a single garment often travels more than a person does in a lifetime, clothing simultaneously defines local cultures. The solution demands strengthening these local cultural and economic threads. The book proposes a fundamental shift back to localized, cooperative systems, using wool as the prime example of a sustainable path forward.
The central idea is that the greatest environmental gains come from "closer cooperation in these localized value chains."
Wool is positioned not just as another sustainable material, but as the ideal catalyst for change because:
A key radical element of the book is its critique of the current economic debate:
The book is structured to analyze the problem. To propose a solution through wool and then discuss the massive economic and social changes required.
| Chapter | Topic Focus | Key Takeaway |
| 1: KRUSing into the Future | Restoring a Local Value Chain Through Cooperation. | How localized projects (like KRUS) can succeed by having all parts of the supply chain—from farmer to customer—work closely together. |
| 2: The Fate of Natural Fibres | Environmental Evaluations: A Question of Volume. | A deep dive into how current tools like LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) often misrepresent natural fibers, inadvertently giving non-renewable synthetics a "green light." |
| 3: Upping the WOOLUME | Waste Prevention Based on Optimal Use of Materials. | The book demands optimal usage of wool. It outlines strategies to capture value from every grade of the fibre. Including lower-quality fleece, effectively ending the current massive textile waste. |
| 4: Slow and Indigenous Approaches | Learning from Textile Arts and Cultural Heritage. | Highlighting traditional and Indigenous craft techniques that inherently promote longevity, quality, and a cultural connection to clothing. |
| 5: Setting a New Stage | Small Scale as a Way Forward. | Arguing that decentralized, small-scale production—rather than global giants—is the most resilient and sustainable economic model for fashion. |
| 6: Rethinking the (Wool) Economy | Discussing Degrowth and Social-Ecological Transformation. | An essential discussion on moving away from the "profit-as-sole-goal" model and exploring radical economic alternatives for the textile sector. |
| 7: A Fashion Future | Fibre Diet (The Conclusion). | A forward-looking vision for how consumers and producers can adopt a new "diet" of clothing consumption—prioritizing appropriate, quality, natural fibers. |
This book is more than a study of wool; it's a radical manifesto for change. It challenges the conventional wisdom that sustainable fashion requires complex, worldwide technology. Instead, "Local, Slow and Sustainable Fashion" asks us to look to our own backyards and heritage.
The editors, Klepp and Tobiasson, argue that the path to a healthier Earth—and a more resilient economy—lies in cooperation, localization, and a deep respect for natural resources. By focusing on wool, a regenerative fiber under threat, the book provides a clear, actionable blueprint for disrupting "fast fashion's" destructive mindset.
Prepare to have your assumptions about clothing, value, and economic growth completely rewoven.
