Age Group: KS3 (Ages 11-14)

Most fashion-conscious young people will have heard of the term sustainable fashion, but with such a sea of information available it can be hard to know which aspects are relevant to individuals. For young readers hitting the age where they are starting to make their own decisions about buying clothing, this is a practical and accessible guide to becoming a conscious consumer while developing an individual fashion sense.

The book educates readers on the life cycle of clothing, laying out the huge amount of labour involved in each stage from growing and harvesting cotton through to selling the garment in a shop. Typically a single t-shirt passes through at least 100 pairs of hands in production before even being tried on, and can often have travelled thousands of miles too.

While recognising the importance of fashion and the role it plays in individual expression, the authors explain the human and environmental ethical implications of the ‘fast fashion’ industry and then gives a toolkit of ethical ways to be fashion-conscious. Readers will learn how to make decisions when shopping, to check labels and fabrics, to wash clothes well and to ‘make do and mend’ or upcycle old clothing. There’s also a handy history of fashion to put modern consumer habits into context.

This is an informative and empowering non-fiction book for young people who are now old enough to take responsibility for their own decisions when choosing and buying clothes.