63 Exclusive Slow Fashion Quotes From The Best Designers

The rise of fast fashion over the last 20 years caused many environmental and social disasters. As a more conscious and responsible alternative, slow fashion is now more important than ever before.

A more ethical and sustainable approach to fashion is gaining traction in the textile and apparel industry for good reasons. Fashion is one of the largest polluters globally and a massive contributor to climate change.

The overconsumption and overproduction of cheaply made clothes endanger people, animals, and the planet. Luckily, the green movement is booming, especially in the fashion world.

Encouraged by consumers, organizations, brands, and retailers, fashion designers feel a greater responsibility toward the environment and the workers in supply chains.

Here is a selection of the best exclusive quotes on slow, sustainable, and ethical fashion from well-known designers around the world.

1. "Slow fashion is about designing, producing, consuming, and living better. Slow fashion is not time-based but quality-based (which has some time components). Slow is not the opposite of fast – there is no dualism – but a different approach in which designers, buyers, retailers, and consumers are more aware of the impacts of products on workers, communities, and ecosystems."

- Kate Fletcher, Research Professor, Author, Consultant, and Design Activist
2. "If you think about how much fashion there is, whether it be luxury or fast, it is sort of swamping the planet, we have been relying on an essentially medieval industry. It really is an amazing moment we are living in... change on everything, on energy, on architecture, this is the moment to look to the future for our children."

- Stella Nina McCartney, English fashion designer
3. "The last month I’ve spent in knowing and believing that tomorrow is definitely not going to be the same as yesterday. It never has and can never be."

- Amit Aggarwal, Indian fashion designer
4. “Today, buying a dress is like buying a BigMac; cheap, fast and, judging by the poorer quality seen in fast fashion clothes, not very healthy.”

- Christina Dean, Redress founder, and Chief Executive Officer
5. "We stay because we feel like we can make a difference by being there."

- Eileen Fisher, an American clothing designer
6. "Today the consumer is completely detached from the clothes he or she wears and from who makes them, it happens far away so we don't see it... Out of sight, out of mind."

- Livia Firth, Co-founder and Creative Director of Eco-Age
7. “I'm for style. Fashions change too quickly.”

- Coco Chanel, French fashion designer, and businesswoman
8. "COVID-19 has helped us with the realization that maybe we have too many things, things which are locked in cupboards where we don’t end up using 90 percent of them."

- Rahul Mishra, Indian luxury fashion designer
9. "I love things that age well - things that don't date, that stand the test of time and that become living examples of the absolute best."

- Giorgio Armani, Italian fashion designer
10. "The first thing is to rethink everything you may ever have been taught."

- Safia Minney, a British social entrepreneur, and People Tree founder
11. “The fast fashion business model is finite because the natural resources it uses will get scarcer and scarcer. If you want your company to be successful 15 years from now, you have to address these issues today, even if your profits are a lot less as a result.”

- Livia Firth, Co-founder and Creative Director of Eco-Age
12. “The really great thing about my shoe store is that there’s not one dead animal in it.”

- Stella Nina McCartney, English fashion designer
13. “Fashion can be a universal player in protecting the planet.”

- Pharrell Lanscilo Williams, American singer and fashion designer
14. “Becoming more mindful about clothing means looking at every fiber, at every seed and every dye, and seeing how to make it better. We don’t want sustainability to be our edge, we want it to be universal.”

- Eileen Fisher, an American clothing designer
15. "For me, fast fashion was always little uninspiring - and it’s often synthetic, which I don’t like to wear. I love craft skills and natural textile, it feels better on your skin; the largest organ of your body."

- Safia Minney, a British social entrepreneur, and People Tree founder
16. "This is the biggest silver lining, to bring the rhythm of production and consumption back into harmony with nature and the environment in a sustainable fashion."

- Rahul Mishra, Indian luxury fashion designer
17. "Fashion is made to become unfashionable."

- Coco Chanel, French fashion designer, and businesswoman
18. "One day we’ll wake up and Green will not be the new black, it will be the new invisible. Meaning, no longer will 'sustainable' be the exception or something that’s considered au courant; instead, it will be a matter of course – something that all designers incorporate into their design ethos."

- Summer Rayne Oakes, American fashion model, and entrepreneur

19. "More than sustainability people cared the most about whether or not this clothing looks good on me, and whether or not I can afford it. Today’s sustainable fashion is often more expensive. And it doesn’t look that exciting.”

- Shelly Xu, Shelly Xu Design founder
20. “Buy less. Choose well. Make it last.”

- Vivienne Westwood, British fashion designer, and businesswoman
21. “Demand quality not just in the products you buy, but in the life of the person who made it.”

- Orsola de Castro, pioneer and leader in sustainable fashion
22. "Leaders must no longer separate their personal and professional values and ethics. For each decision you make, check it against a mental image of what your children, your grandchildren, and your inner conscience say about it."

- Safia Minney, People Tree founder, and British social entrepreneur
23. "Clothes aren’t going to change the world, the women who wear them will."

- Anne Klein, American fashion designer, and businesswoman
24. "Become an active citizen through your wardrobe."

- Livia Firth, Co-founder and Creative Director of Eco-Age
25. "The first thing is to rethink everything you may ever have been taught."

- Safia Minney, People Tree founder, and British social entrepreneur
26. "Consumer demand can revolutionize the way fashion works as an industry. If everyone started to question the way we consume, we would see a radically different fashion paradigm."

- Carry Somers, British fashion designer, and social entrepreneur

27. “My freshman year at FIT, one of my teachers said there are good designers and there are great designers. Good designers have careers and see their stuff in stores, and great designers change the way people dress.”

- Daniel Silverstein, Zero Waste Daniel founder, and Creative Director
28. "One should move away from overproduction and overconsumption and I feel this crisis will have a positive impact on the future."

- Rahul Mishra, Indian luxury fashion designer
29. "Don’t be into trends. Don’t make fashion own you, but you decide what you are, what you express by the way you dress, and the way you live."

- Giovanni Maria Versace, Versace founder, and Italian fashion designer
30. "There has never been a time when we have had more hope in ending fashion's use of fur and leather - a practice that is cruel to the animals and harmful to the planet."

- Stella Nina McCartney, English fashion designer
31. "Start thinking of yourself as a servant leader. The practices and behaviors of this type of leader are completely different. Honesty, integrity, humility, empathy, and listening are what you should be aiming for and exhibiting."

- Safia Minney, a British social entrepreneur, and People Tree founder
32. "The challenges are going to be different and probably larger but if we can adapt and have hope tucked deep within our hearts, there isn’t a challenge we cannot overcome. Because hope is the biggest antidote."

- Amit Aggarwal, Indian fashion designer
33. "Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance."

- Coco Chanel, French fashion designer, and businesswoman
34. "In a world still churning out trendy throw-away fashion pieces at breakneck speed, the idea of upcycled or refashioned apparel can be an anomaly. But it is a continuously growing trend and is one of the most sustainable things people can do in fashion. As upcycling makes use of already existing pieces, it often uses few resources in its creation and keeps ‘unwanted’ items out of the waste stream."

- Beth Stewart, Redress co-founder, and Executive Director
35. "Slow fashion means valuing an item for years to come and not purchasing an item for trend purposes, only to dispose of it next season."

- Nika Diamond-Krendel, Founder and Creative Director of Paradise Row
36. "By buying less, we will decrease the unnecessary production of new textiles and also reduce our personal clothes waste. Buying better essentially means being more conscious of what we buy, from better quality fabrics made from more sustainable materials, which tends to mean spending more on each garment."

- Christina Dean, Redress founder, and Chief Executive Officer
37. "This crisis has brought with it two things, one we have started thinking a lot more rationally, and secondly we have all slowed down in pace. This was needed, especially to get back into rhythm with nature, which we lost long ago."

- Rahul Mishra, Indian luxury fashion designer
38. "Fast fashion is like fast food. After the sugar rush, it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth."

- Livia Firth, Co-founder and Creative Director of Eco-Age

39. "Fashion shows are a dinosaur."

- Simon Ungless, Executive Director at Academy of Art University
40. "Fur? I am out of that. I don’t want to kill animals to make fashion. It doesn’t feel right."

- Donatella Francesca Versace, Versace Chief Creative Officer
41. “As a designer, I like to work with fabrics that don’t bleed. That’s why I avoid all animal skins.”

- Stella Nina McCartney, English fashion designer
42. "Unethical fashion means very very little transparency, accountability, and knowledge of the supply chain [...] very quick lead times and production turnaround. It means producers played off against each other. It means a wage that doesn’t even afford the worker an adequate salary for two meals a day.”

- Safia Minney, People Tree founder, and British social entrepreneur
43. "I think we're actually a platform. I think it's really, really important for businesses to speak to certain issues. In a different time, you would think the government would be holding those kinds of things, so it's sort of requiring us to step up more."

- Eileen Fisher, an American clothing designer
44. “Good design is a sustainable design”.

- Imran Amed, The Business of Fashion founder
45. “Call it eco-fashion if you like, I think it is just common sense.”

- Livia Firth, Co-founder and Creative Director of Eco-Age
46. “No more fashion victims.”

- Katharine E. Hamnett, English fashion designer
47. “The difference between style and fashion is quality.”

- Giorgio Armani, Italian fashion designer

48. "Slow fashion to me is the outcome of a more conscious and considered approach to purchasing something new; it is essentially a reduction of materialistic consumption."

- Eshita Kabra-Davies, Rotation founder
49. “When I was a student, sustainability was a club you could join. It certainly wasn’t anything you could major or minor in. It really didn’t surpass more than the organic cotton, natural dye conversation."

- Daniel Silverstein, Zero Waste Daniel founder, and Creative Director
50. "Fashion fades, only style remains the same."

- Coco Chanel, French fashion designer, and businesswoman
51. "Sustainability and Green Fashion have been an important topic during this decade; it has been discussed in various international forums for a long time, so it’s not something new or in focus because of the pandemic."

- Rahul Mishra, Indian luxury fashion designer
52. “It is better to have fewer things of quality than too much expendable junk.”

- Rachel Zoe Rosenzweig, American fashion designer, and businesswoman
53. “Fashion typifies just how unsustainable our capitalistic system is today.”

- Safia Minney, People Tree founder, and British social entrepreneur
54. "Luxury fashion is incredibly harmful, [and so is] fashion in general. It needs to get more modern and man up."

- Stella Nina McCartney, English fashion designer
55. "Slow fashion is a reaction against the unethical business practice of the fast, cheap, mass-produced branch of the fashion industry. Slow fashion’s ethos is based on the sustainable circular idea that rates an environmentally friendly production lifecycle, vintage, on demand, bespoke, high quality and timeless design, repair, up cycling and rental."

- Schelay McCarter, Creative Designer, Art Director, Styling Tutor
56. "Every time you shop, always think, 'Will I wear this a minimum of 30 times?'"

- Livia Firth, Co-founder and Creative Director of Eco-Age
57. “I'm excited about consumers falling in love with fashion again; learning to love it, cherish and flaunt real and true fashion.”

- Christina Dean, Redress founder, and Chief Executive Officer
58. "If you can carry one thing in your heart, let it be hope. Let it be hope, that you can get through even the toughest of times. Because during these times, hope will be the very thing that carries you through"

- Amit Aggarwal, Indian fashion designer

59. “Covid-19 has pushed us off the ledge of discussing change, we no longer have the luxury of complaining about outdated systems yet not doing anything about it."

- Simon Ungless, Executive Director at Academy of Art University
60. “We hear that sustainability is a trend, but sustainability means something so much deeper than what a style looks like. It actually means being able to maintain what we’re doing at a specific rate or level."

- Daniel Silverstein, Zero Waste Daniel founder, and Creative Director
61. "The slow fashion philosophy - a philosophy that is based on longer utilization, better durability, higher quality, ethical production as well as being environmentally friendly."

- Aprina Murwanti, Researcher, Senior Lecturer
62. "I believe the ‘COVID-19 break’ as I like to call it, has put a break on manufacturing, production, retail, and consumption, giving us a chance to think about what we want our future to be."

- Rahul Mishra, Indian luxury fashion designer
63. "Each decision we make is a symbol of our commitment to defining what the future of fashion looks like."

- Stella Nina McCartney, English fashion designer

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Alex Assoune (MS) is a global health and environmental advocate. He founded Panaprium to inspire others with conscious living, ethical, and sustainable fashion. Alex has worked in many countries to address social and environmental issues. He speaks three languages and holds two Master of Science degrees in Engineering from SIGMA and IFPEN schools.