Framing Regenerative Fashion

‘Regenerative fashion’ emerged as a term some years ago to describe extended sustainability commitments within the fashion sector. It has since become an increasingly popular word, a buzzword even, but currently there is no consensus regarding its definition. The term is often associated with regenerative agriculture and with claims to help mitigate climate change by increasing soil carbon capture during raw material production. This chapter looks at two rather distinct regenerative approach narratives that are forming in the fashion sector. One is a fashion practice that is a quantitative, market-based approach to regeneration; the other argues that fashion sustainability suffers from a serious equity deficit and takes a more qualitative, context-related and structural approach. The analysis draws from regenerative sustainability, design justice literature and environmental discourse analysis. Placing regenerative fashion within this theoretical framework illuminates the need for a series of questions concerning regenerative interventions in the fashion industry. This study aims to offer grounds for a discussion on regenerative fashion and the need to define the phenomena, describe how it is connected to the power-play behind fashion and discuss who/what stakeholders need to be included in the extended sustainability understanding.