History & culture

Third-party certification schemes that verify garment supply chains meet standards for fair wages, safe working conditions, and environmental practices, developed largely from the 1990s onward in response to sweatshop scandals.

A retail business model built on rapidly translating runway and trend ideas into cheap, mass-produced clothing with quick turnaround, expanding globally from the 1990s alongside globalized garment manufacturing.

A British government campaign launched in 1943 during wartime rationing that taught households to repair, alter, and repurpose existing clothing rather than buy new garments.

The manufacture of garments in large standardized batches using factory division of labor and specialized machinery, a shift that accelerated after the sewing machine's spread in the mid-19th century.

The 2013 collapse of a garment factory building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which killed over 1,100 workers and became a defining catalyst for global scrutiny of fast fashion's labor practices.

Clothing manufactured in standard sizes for immediate purchase, as opposed to custom-made garments; it grew from 19th-century military uniform production and expanded rapidly with department stores in the 20th century.

A movement advocating fewer, higher-quality, and more thoughtfully made garments over disposable trend-driven clothing, emphasizing durability, ethical labor, and reduced environmental impact; the term was coined around 2007.

An approach to clothing design, production, and consumption aimed at minimizing environmental harm and social exploitation across a garment's life cycle, gaining wider industry attention from the 2000s onward.

A manufacturing workplace characterized by long hours, low pay, and unsafe conditions, historically associated with garment production since the Industrial Revolution and a continuing concern in global fashion supply chains.

The practice of transforming used fabric, garments, or offcuts into new items of equal or greater value rather than discarding or downcycling them, a core strategy of sustainable fashion.

A British wartime program launched in 1941 that standardized clothing designs to conserve fabric and labor, marking approved garments with a 'CC41' label denoting Controlled Commodity.

A pattern-design method that arranges garment pieces to use an entire fabric width with no offcuts discarded, a technique with historical roots in traditional garment shapes like the kimono and sari.