Earlier this month I had the privilege of moderating a panel discussion at the Stockholm School of Economics – Handels. It was part of Sustainable Fashion Week, a student-led initiative organised by SASSE, the Student Association at SSE, that brings together students and industry voices to explore what sustainability looks like in practice. The panel was called ”Fashion is not sustainable by nature”.
Discussions opened with the question “Can fashion consumption ever be sustainable, or is “sustainable fashion” a contradiction in itself?”
The discomfort was almost audible.
And Jakob Dworsky, co-founder of ASKET, answered it directly: ”Sustainable fashion in itself is an oxymoron, a paradox. Fashion is very closely tied to short-lived trends. It’s built on perfecting planned obsolescence.” He paused, then added something that stayed with me: ”Overconsumption is not a byproduct of fashion. It’s part of the system as it looks today.”
That’s a remarkable thing for a fashion brand founder to say out loud in public. And it’s precisely the kind of honesty that gets lost when this conversation retreats into marketing language.
The materials argument has a problem
We’ve spent years being told that sustainable fashion is about *what* we buy; the certifications, the organic cotton, the recycled polyester, the better-sourced everything. And yes, materials matter. But Jakob put a number to something the industry rarely says clearly: ”There is no scenario that I can see where we consume clothing the way we do today and just buy more sustainably and reach the Paris Agreement. The industry has made a lot of progress in materials and processes over the last 20 years, but the impact has grown steadily because the volume of garments has outgrown any progress made.”
You can’t innovate your way out of a volume problem.
This is what makes moments like the recent Stella McCartney x H&M collaboration so worth examining. Better materials, a respected name, good intentions stated loudly – and yet if those garments sit inside the same high-volume, high-turnover business model, what has actually changed? As Jakob put it: ”You can’t shop your way to sustainability.”
The most meaningful metric, he argued, isn’t what a garment is made of. It’s how many times you wear it. ”If you increase the wears per garment, you’ll get the impact per wear down by far more than you ever could by switching from conventional to organic cotton.” That’s a harder sell than a better fabric story. But it’s the true one.
Desire is not the enemy – and this matters
One of my favourite moments in the conversation was when I asked whether fashion could still be playful and something that sparks emotions if we step back from constant newness. Ann Ringstrand – fashion designer and founder of the brand Hope, is someone who has spent her entire career thinking about what it means to make clothes people genuinely love. She didn’t hesitate to answer.
”If we start thinking that desire is not important to us, I think we lose already from the beginning.” she said. ”It can be in five pieces. You like red – do big red. One red sleeve. You play around. Desire can absolutely be included. It’s not the contradiction.”
I think it’s important to say that clearly, because too much sustainability messaging makes people feel that caring about how they look is somehow the problem. It isn’t. The problem is a system that has learned to convert that very human feeling – the pleasure of getting dressed, the creativity of self-expression – into an endless appetite for more. And they’re not the same thing.
Ann herself now makes sewing pattern books for fashionable clothes you make yourself. She has sold more than 30,000 copies of the first one. ”I found a path I could stay with for the rest of my life,” she said. ”Bringing people back to understanding what goes into a garment. Making it with your hands. That’s sustainable fashion.”
Seeing your wardrobe differently
Amanda, co-founder of Bencha, an AI platform working on circular business models for fashion, asked a very practical question: what if we started treating clothes the way we treat cars?
”Can we look into products as assets? When you buy a car, you’re always thinking about the value when you sell it. The total value of what’s in your wardrobe is probably at the same level as a car – sometimes more. If we start looking at it that way, we can actually combine how we buy, how long we keep things, and when we pass them on.”
The analogy makes the capsule wardrobe idea feel less like a lifestyle aspiration and more like basic logic. It’s not about acquiring ten new perfect pieces – it’s about a considered relationship with what you already own, and making a genuine investment in what you add.
I asked Jakob how many pieces of clothing he owns. ”Four shirts, five t-shirts, three pairs of trousers – not much more.” He smiled. ”A capsule wardrobe, yes. Very much so.”
So who is actually responsible?
This was the question that generated the most heat in the room and the students in the audience felt it too. Amanda put it in terms I keep returning to: ”I would say that brands are behind, because they don’t understand how fast this transformation is going. And if we continue to communicate about new materials and then also communicate *here are our discounts, buy three, pay for two* – consumers will behave like that. It’s like when you have kids: if you yell at them, they yell back. Even if you say you don’t like when they yell.”
Consumers, she argued, are actually moving faster than the industry. The second-hand clothing market is growing. People are asking the harder questions. But none of it adds up to systemic change if brands keep setting the terms, and if regulation doesn’t follow.
Ann agreed: ”I think it really needs to be regulated. It needs to come from above. And then I think we are creative enough to find ways to inspire smaller wardrobes, use things for a longer time, mend.”
What I came away with.
The conclusion from the panel’s varied perspectives was something I’ve lived for years; use what you already have, consume less, buy with more intention – and recognise that there are real contradictions in the system that we need to talk honestly about.
Anna Blom is a moderator, speaker and journalist working at the intersection of fashion, sustainability and communication. She moderated ”Fashion is not sustainable by nature” – a panel discussion organised by Sustainable Fashion Week at the Stockholm School of Economics (Handels), with panellists Ann Ringstrand, Jakob Dworsky (ASKET) and Amanda Thorén (Bencha).
