Dario Casalini
The fast fashion industry is a significant contributor to the accelerating climate, nature, and pollution crises. Dario Casalini, founder of the Slow Fiber network, offers an alternative to the unsustainable economic model that has proliferated ecologically destructive practices in the supply chain and fueled harmful consumption patterns. He shares the story of the Slow Fiber network in Italy and its mission to shape a more conscious relationship with fashion by redefining ‘beauty’ through practices that are good, fair, clean, healthy and durable for the environment and communities we live in.
The current times are challenging, to say the least. We are witnessing a triple crisis: ecological and climatic (which manifests in biodiversity destruction and species extinction estimated at almost 200 per day); public health (hunger, malnutrition, pandemics, epidemics, chronic diseases caused by pollution); poverty and inequality that marginalizes a large part of the population at the threshold of subsistence. A single, uniform monocultural economic model has been imposed upon us in which the distance between producer and consumer has allowed practices and behaviours that are highly harmful to the environment and the social communities involved in the production processes to take root throughout the entire supply chain. This is also true of the fashion industry, and a consumer who does not know how an object is produced cannot exercise their critical capacity and therefore has no true freedom of choice.
Unsustainable Production and Consumption Models
Let’s consider, for instance, the problem of waste. The modern society of waste, not just the fashion sector, offers to the vast numbers of increasingly unhappy and dissatisfied consumers a false notion of beauty – ephemeral and apparent, but actually destructive, because in its production process, it swallows up natural resources and human beings, and only produces inequality. It is necessary to redefine the contemporary concept of ‘beauty’ because it is not only the aesthetic value that is relevant, but also the way in which it is achieved. How can fashion be beautiful if it is not good, healthy, clean, fair and durable?
Pic by Nipah Dennis/Getty Images
In recent decades, fashion has found sustenance from a diabolical combination of innovation and digital communication. Till fairly recently, we were free to fill the purchased object with meaning and even establish a lasting relationship with it, because it was an objective correlative of our memories and experience as well as an expression of our personality. Today, we consume almost only for social imitation, so the products are already full of meaning and predefined content, and we cannot add anything to them. This makes them disposable because as soon as the hypercommunication society changes the model, we have to change the product, get rid of the old ones and consume the new ones, at an ever-increasing speed. Thus, the waste society is founded on waste (see Armiero’s concept of ‘Wasteocene’).
Looking for Alternatives
Unfortunately, the awareness of the decline we are experiencing is still minimally widespread in society because it requires a desire to delve deeper and the ability to analyze complexity. The capitalist model that destroys to produce false material beauty externalizes and relocates at a fair distance the real costs (environmental and social) of the production process and the consequent management of its waste, so consumers have gone from not knowing to not wanting to know. Additionally, the dominant economic model commodifies every relationship and common good in order to generate profit while continuing to measure and attribute value to what undermines and destroys well-being, happiness, people’s sense of security and social cohesion. This leads to the paradox that the economies represented as the most prosperous are those in which the quality of life is quite vexing.
The good news is that there are collective movements who want to change this situation because they have become fully aware of the worrisome reality and know that it is necessary to reform production and consumption models at the same time. That is, no change imposed from above (e.g., regulations, protectionism, etc.) will have lasting effects if it isn’t accompanied by cultural shifts. There are also virtuous companies, usually medium scale (because the quantity and volumes of production are one of the major problems of the fashion industry), which propose responsible production models which take on all the environmental and social externalities of production, taking care of the ecosystem and the communities in which they operate in the name of long-term sustainability whose benefits spread throughout the territory.
Personal journey: Return to family business
It was not easy to wrap my head around this thorny and tricky condition of modern fashion. I’m a former Professor of Public Law without any relation to fashion, except that I belonged to a family which ran a fashion business established in 1936 by my grandfather. Circumstances, however, forced me to be closely involved in deciding the future of the company, a small yet recognized world leader in the production of seamless underwear knitwear in natural fibre with the technology of circular knitting machines. There wasn’t an efficient separation between ownership and management, and someone in the family had to deal with what to do about its future. I left my academic career in 2013, taking the reins of the company. Simply by observing what my predecessors had built over two generations, I realized that the model is extremely sustainable and virtuous: a strong connection with the territory; constant commitment to maintaining and promoting the skills and know-how of the workers and reducing its environmental impact; in-house production of energy via photovoltaic system, geothermal system, recycling and reuse of waste; a very short supply chain (80% of suppliers within a radius of 200 km); a vertically integrated production process, from thread to finished garment; managing internally the processes of weaving, finishing, cutting, sewing, quality control and logistics phases; application of eco-design criteria in creating products largely made of mono-materials and natural fibers, of high quality, therefore very durable and easy to dispose of at the end of the production cycle life.
There are thousands of companies like mine in the world, bearers of a positive and virtuous model of producing textiles, far from the scandals and disasters created by fast fashion. Believing that the future does not lie in competition (typical of the animal kingdom) but in collaboration (characteristic of the plant kingdom, which is very resilient and efficient), I thought that a project could be started to share these values starting from my suppliers, with whom I have ever closer relationships and true partnerships and that’s how Slow Fiber was born.
Genesis and Principles of Slow Fiber
Slow Fiber was born from the meeting between Slow Food and some virtuous companies in the textile supply chain whose commitment is aimed at creating industrial models that offer beautiful products, because they are good, healthy, clean, fair and durable, respectful of the dignity of the human beings and the rest of Nature in its delicate balance. Today, more than ever, it is essential to transform the production processes and methods of consumption of the planet’s resources, respecting the dignity of living beings and nature, and spreading a new ethic and culture of dressing and furnishing among all its inhabitants.
The common principle of Slow Food and Slow Fiber is to rediscover and restore awareness and knowledge of how products are made, working to ensure there is a change of direction towards environmental sustainability and respect for the people involved in the production chains, and for the consumers of these products. The strength of the Slow Fiber project lies in the entrepreneurial realities that are part of the process, and in the people involved as well, those who function every day as the spokespersons for these values and work tirelessly to make them possible and tangible, choosing and promoting suppliers and partners who share the same supply chain values.
Slow Fiber is a network of 30 companies, currently all Italian, which has a dual objective: on the one hand, it wants to disseminate knowledge of the impact that textile products have on the environment, on workers in the supply chain and the health of the consumers, promoting and supporting, together with Slow Food, awareness campaigns through the testimony and direct participation of companies that operate daily in compliance with environmental and social sustainability; on the other hand, it wants to protect and promote local supply chains, which in any part of the world, share the values of Beauty that aspires to be good, healthy, clean, fair and durable, and thus induce other companies to adopt the same virtuous and respectful industrial model.
The Essence of Beauty: Good, Healthy, Clean, Fair and Durable
Each of the key words (good, healthy, clean, fair and durable) that define the essence of Slow Fiber has been broken down into a series of requirements and criteria, some obligatory, others that assign a score, which each company belonging to the network must satisfy and is committed to improving over the years.
- The concept of ‘good’ is anchored in the industrial model: the presence of a manufacturing hub capable of completing a production step in the textile supply chain while maintaining a link with the territory of origin and rooted in the territorial community in which the business was started, without ever having delocalized or outsourced production.
- Healthy includes the management and use of chemical substances along the supply chain and therefore present on the final product.
- Clean expresses the relationship with the environment and the constant and continuous commitment to reducing the environmental footprint of production processes.
- Fair represents the management of human resources, working conditions, compliance with safety and health standards in the workplace, the guarantee of the rights to exercise freedom of association and a decent wage.
- Making durable products is a fundamental aspect of combating waste, reducing the consumption of resources and the consequent creation of waste. Slow Fiber is committed to guaranteeing excellent quality and long durability of the textile products it places on the market.
Thus, Slow Fiber aims to be systemic, holistic and intellectually honest, taking into consideration all the phases of the long and complex textile supply chain and applying the criteria of good, healthy, clean, fair and durable without prejudices or extremisms that have no scientific basis. We are not nostalgic for a “primitive” world or against technology and innovation, but we are convinced that the latter must be developed and operated within a horizon of values that allows us to discard options that are harmful or have an excessive impact on man and nature, always paying attention to the complexity of the textile supply chain as well as the social communities and the ecosystems involved in production.
Support from the fashion industry
Slow Fiber was born only two years ago in Italy and has so far received many expressions of interest from young people who are our future, activists, people who feel uncomfortable in a violently unequal and unjust world. While these groups, perhaps, represent a niche but they are very determined to spread their word. When you really understand what is behind certain fashion chains, it is difficult to remain indifferent, and critical consumption becomes a mission, which is often quite satisfying and fun. So far we have not attracted the attention of large companies, but we are convinced that many of them share our values and implement them daily in their activities.
The Slow Fiber companies demonstrate that the model is economically sustainable but it certainly requires a market whose operators have a profound awareness of how important it is to choose good, healthy, clean, fair and durable products and are willing to pay a price suitable to cover all real costs.
Replicating principles of the Slow Fiber model around the world
Slow Fiber wants to follow the path of Slow Food and therefore create other networks soon in the countries that have a long textile tradition. Everywhere in the world there are textile companies that represent the possibility of operating in an ethical and virtuous way despite the highly competitive nature of the fashion and textile sector, maintaining economic sustainability and educating people to consume less, though better, in order to have a positive impact on major environmental crises all cross the globe. The globalization of the textile sector has seen the emergence of a model that delegates to the global South the burden of producing and receiving the textile waste commissioned and returned by the global North which has imposed its own taste, its own volumes and its own standards without accounting for and sharing all the costs.
The spread of Slow Fiber abroad involves the delicate process of translating the measurement requirements into different cultures and different systems. Consequently, we’ve decided to proceed with caution. For us, it is important to launch one or more Slow Fibers abroad in the near future, perhaps starting from countries in Africa, South America, and Asia. These regions have suffered and still suffer because of Western textile colonialism the most, and we want to demonstrate that there are virtuous alternative models, which are ethical and economically sustainable and create textile not based on exploitation and waste. The undertaking is not simple because Slow Fiber was created to demonstrate along the entire supply chain a beautiful, good, healthy, clean, fair and durable textile on an industrial scale, and transporting that idea as well as the process is going to have its own predicaments and hitches.
Hope for the future: ripples of multi-scalar change
Despite the current uncertainties and challenges, both, at the geopolitical level and at the dominant economic model level, we are confident in the gentle force that Slow Fiber can help develop for radical ecological and social change. Slow Fiber is a highly collaborative model, not vertical but networked, as Slow Food is, so we seek collaboration with all movements and associations that share the idea that virtuous textiles are possible and economically sustainable.
To achieve this result, however, we must always work on two fronts: on the one hand, informing and educating the consumer to make responsible and informed choices that guarantee correct remuneration for the entire supply chain, i.e. to consume much less and much better; on the other, grouping together virtuous textile companies that, anywhere in the world, share our values or want to undertake an ethical path towards environmental and social sustainability with the idea of offering an alternative industrial model to the dominant one. Instead of the current destructive notion of beauty, we would like to usher in an ideal of beauty that is regenerative for the environment and assures well-being, happiness, security and social cohesion for people.
Dario Casalini is a textile entrepreneur in Turin, Italy with knitwear brands Oscalito and Natyoural ( afamily business established in 1936). He is the author of “Vestire Buono, pulito e giusto”, Slow Food editore, 2021 (published in French with the title Un avenir à tisser, Cohen&Cohen, 2024) and founder of the Slow Fiber network. Prior to this, he was a Professor of Public Law from 1999 to 2013.
If you enjoyed reading this article, please do join us for our first webinar of the year titled ‘Tearing Down the Straitjacket: Reimagining Fashion and Beauty in the 21st Century’
In conversation with Dario Casalini and Alessandra Monaco, we will explore emerging alternatives to the dominant, ecologically destructive industrial model of fast fashion and commodified notions of beauty. How can we bring about cultural shifts by reimagining beauty as a form of art and fashion as a tool for creative expression and liberation?
We will hear from Dario about the Slow Fiber Movement in Italy and its radical approach towards sustainability. Alessandra will share more about her work at the intersection of fashion, sustainability and beauty, which she also explored in a three-part series on RED last year.
Date: Thursday, 23rd January 2025
Time: 6.30 pm IST | 1.00 pm GMT
Link to Register: bit.ly/RED-fashion-webinar
